Nice to see you too. I flew to Manchester, via Florida – which was crazy. We landed on the edge of a hurricane, of course. I hadn’t slept, at that point. For about 36 hours.

I’ve heard this. I mean, obviously, it’s nice to hear those things, but I don’t take them very seriously, to be honest.

Q: It’s good not to take yourself too seriously.

I remember people saying that to us when we first started: “Oh, you’ve obviously been influenced by The Comsat Angels.” It was really irritating – I’ve got, what, one album? I mean, I’m sure they used to say that to Interpol, and I’m sure it used to drive them into a twist, as well. You don’t want to hear that, really.

Q: But Oasis are such gentle chaps, why would they be bothered by anything?

(Laughing heartily) Obviously, yeah.

Q: I respect that bands want to have their own identity, I get it. You’ve stated that you’ve managed to to transcend the confines of your own legacy. Can you expound on that? In what way?

People come to expect you to sound a certain way. A big part of that is Dave’s guitar sound. Dave left the band twenty years ago. So, obviously, I wanted to get away from that right away – I didn’t want to borrow somebody else’s guitar sound for the sake of maintaining some type of legacy, to appease those audiences who have been with us for a very long time. We needed to very much reflect who the band are now, and create the type of sound that we want to create.

When we first started, punk was in its heyday, and it was certainly an influence on me, so that was kind of the direction that we went in. But now, all this time later, the elements are finally in place where we felt like we could take the band forward, and get away from the straitjacket of that ambient, echoey, Eighties, post-punk guitar sound and style. Our influences now tend to be bands from the Sixties and Seventies, who made us want to buy records and dream about being in a band in the first place. Does that make sense?

Q: Absolutely. I know that punk bands, in particular, can feel pigeonholed by the genre. Fans aren’t always so accepting of you expanding your horizons. I know you want to avoid comparisons, but who are some of those influences that you’ve been tapping into now?

Oh my God, I mean...I owned my first record at the age of four, when my grandmother gave me a Beatles album for singing at the family get-together. I got a record player soon after that.

Well, we used to get together, and they’d want me to sing.

Q: A little four year old – no pressure!

I don’t know if it was mild autism, or what, but I wasn’t speaking intelligibly until then, and they got worried about me. It was actually the brilliant idea of one of the trainees at the kindergarten in 1964. She brought some Beatles records in, and played them to me, and I learned to sing along with them – that’s how I learned language. And then, once I had started singing, my family all thought it was so cute, so they wanted me to do it at get-togethers and such. They said that I could have the record. I didn’t have anything to play it on yet, but I liked looking at the pictures on the front. I remember my aunt bringing me to a kind of a game show, like an amateur variety show, and me singing “Please Please Me” on there.

Q: That’s so cute! Do you have any home videos of it? And does Paul McCartney know that he was responsible for you speaking?

No, there was nothing to film it on yet. No, but my fixation was really John Lennon – he had pure charisma.

Q: You do sound a bit like John; I can hear the influence.

(Laughing) So it was The Beatles first, and then, as the sixties progressed, there were The Doors, whom I got into when I was listening to a pirate radio station. And then glam happened: you know, David Bowie, and The Sparks, they were very big bands to me. Dave had an older brother, so his influences tended to be more American music, like Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Reg and I shared a passion for The Who, and the original Alice Cooper Band – people forget that they were a band, before it became all about the singer, although I love him as a solo performer as well. And then punk happened. All of the music that began in the sixties and bled into the seventies were a much bigger influence than more contemporary bands that we’ve been compared to, you know? As much as I loved the Sex Pistols, I was also buying Kate Bush. Kate has been one of my biggest influences when it comes to beauty and depth. Marc Bolan, and, my God, Mark Hollis, what an incredibly unique talent, I was so upset when we lost him. Talk Talk was an incredibly cool experience for me. I could go on forever about all the great talents, past and present, who gave, and continue to give, to us all musically.

Q: How would you describe your evolution from Script of the Bridge to Arctic Moon, both sonically and as people?

Well, I had noticed a gradual progression in the way that we were writing for Strange Times, actually. I personally think I did my best work on that record, as far as what I bring to the band. So the evolution was there, and then, perhaps it’s not a lot to go on, but from there to the Tommy Fletcher tracks, it was continuing to evolve. And then, with Why Call It Anything?, I knew it wasn’t the only record that we had in us, but I saw it as a relearning of how to write together, because we hadn’t really seen each other for about ten years. We’d all gotten into different things by that time. And that’s reflective in songs like “Miracles and Wonders,” where I find myself playing on a Chameleons track. I never thought I’d play like that, and I never thought I’d write alongside an African Rasta. It was fun, and I loved it, but I thought, naively, that the next one would be the one. And, of course, we never got to make it, because nobody bought that one (laughs.) So, with Arctic Moon, unfettered as we are, I’m honestly really excited about it, but it is very, very different. I think it shows a whole new level of maturity in terms of the writing, you know? Sadly, John Lever passed away ten years ago.

Q: Yeah, I’m sorry about that.

Yeah. And Dave went off on his tangent, and I haven’t seen him in over twenty years. So the material is very much reflective of who we are now. And the feedback that I’m getting, having played some of the newer tracks in front of people, is that yeah, of course it’s very different, but it’s still evidently The Chameleons. It’s still got that je nais se quois, which is pleasing. I would say to all of the people to whom that sound is most important, “Well, you’ve still got those records to enjoy – there they are.” And, in terms of bands having been influenced by that sound, bands like Drab Majesty, they’re probably doing it better than we could do it now, right? So go get into them. We just want to do our thing, what we are excited about now. It’s not finished – we’re only about halfway through. We were supposed to finish in July, but I had to take a hiatus – I was having a lot of personal issues. The boat was rocking, and I had to steady that. But we can’t wait to play this. We’re not playing too much of it now, because we don’t want it all over YouTube.

Q: Yeah, you want everybody to have an appetite for it by the time you release it.

Exactly, that’s right.

I don’t normally like doing album performance tours, to be quite honest. I don’t mind them as one-off events, but they’re a completely different dynamic to a live show. You know, when you put an album together in a certain order, you’re doing it very much for the individual listener. That’s who you’re thinking about: the person, singular, who is going to be listening to this, not a show. With a show, you build a set for a completely different dynamic. That was kind of evidenced when I had done album tours, but with Strange Times, because it’s such a challenging record to try and recreate in that way, with the one track leading into another, the treatment of “Tears”, which appears on that album. Clearly different types of songs than what we’ve done before, like “Caution”, for example, “Childhood”, even. It makes it more challenging and interesting to do. It does have kind of a cool completion to it from start to finish – she is a journey. And the fact that we’ve never done it in America before, and it was a very popular record here, I thought “Finally”, you know? And we’ve just had this incredible remaster, with Guy Massey, and we wanted to give that a shout. I understand someone being cynical about it, you know, we’ve got the original pressing, and then there was that unsanctioned one on Record Store Day last year, when that label came out and did one, and now we’ve got another one. But I think that this one really deserved pushing. It’s across three discs, so we’d have to compress it. It sounds great, and it’s mastered by one of the best engineers in the world, you know, the guy that won Grammies for doing Beatles albums like Abbey Road. We’re doing it in three stages, rather than all in one go – which has been financially crippling (laughs.)

Q: It sounds like it!

But it was worth pushing, and that was really the only way that we could accommodate it.

Q: They’re just hearing it for the first time.

They’re only just discovering it, yeah. And we’re playing better than we’ve ever played. I mean: no disrespect to the original line-up – I don’t mean this in any derogatory way – but I’m enjoying this so much more than I ever did. I personally find myself fortunate, because the kind of combination that this is – like it was the first time around – you’re lucky if you find that once in a lifetime, but to come across that twice, that blows my mind. This band that I’m in, I really believe in and love every single person in it. Everyone’s bringing something to it - it’s not me and Reg and a few…it really feels like a proper band, for the first time since the original band that I was in.

Q: And I’m sure that that joy is contagious with the audience.

It’s got to spill over, yeah. When a band is that locked in with each other, yes, there is that kind of vibe loop that we’ve established with the audience, and it just gets bigger and bigger. We have all of that, but really, we’re playing for each other. We enjoy what we’re doing, and we enjoy the music that we’re playing, and the people that we’re playing it with.

Q: Absolutely – it’s an amazing thing that you get to do.

In the original band, Dave was kind of out there on his own, Reg was kind of out there in a world of his own, and I was kind of isolated too.

Q: Yeah, you were different people.

Yeah, and it was good, but it wasn’t that kind of unity that you see with a lot of groups – and I’m not making comparisons here – I just mean that I’ve seen it. You know, when you watch The Beatles at Shea Stadium, they’re having a laugh with each another, they’re playing around - they’re very much a solid band. You get that too with U2, you know, bands like that. You talked about Oasis earlier. I lost interest when…

Q: They started beating the shit out of each other onstage?

No, no, it just became about the Gallaghers, right? You know, Oasis were at their best when Guigsy was in the band, when Bonehead was in the band. When I first saw them, they were a band, and it felt like a band. Liam was just the singer of the band, and Noel was just the songwriter, or whatever – it was the whole thing. As soon as that changed, and it became the two Gallaghers bringing all the people in, it wasn’t the same. And that’s ironic, because people go “Well, it’s not the original Chameleons”. Fine, I understand that, I don’t take offense to that, because I felt exactly the same way myself.

Q: You know, there’s invariably going to be people who, for whatever reason, become standouts of the band. They become the favorites, they become the face of the band, regardless of the distribution of songwriting, or how they play live, that’s just gonna happen. And lineup changes are also gonna happen. How palatable that is for the audience, I guess, is whom they considered to be pivotal.

The problem is – and I find this especially in Europe, although it happens in America as well – the passion for this band goes deeper than I’ve seen with a lot of others. And when I’m playing Chameleons music with other people, they get very upset about that, and they’ll go on social media to complain. And I’m like “Well, do you write to Robert Smith, because he’s the only original one left, and tell him that he’s not supposed to be playing Cure music, because Simon Gallup’s not there?” Other bands don’t get this!

Q: Sure, take a band like The Pixies, that’s not the original lineup.

Exactly! Does Frank Black get loads of letters like that? (Editor’s note: I suspect that he does, actually). No! But I did, and I’m the original writer of these songs. They’re basically telling me that I can’t play my own stuff! It gets a little insane.

Q: Right! It’s not like you’re somebody who took the original band material, and ran with it as if it was your own songwriting.

It’s also quite humbling to be in a band that inspires that depth of passion – it’s not typical. And that tells me that The Chameleons are very special. To find out that people are upset that the band wasn’t more successful than they are is amazing. But nope, because those bands who got the numbers, they don’t get…

Q: That passion?

They don’t! This is almost spiritual, what’s going on.

Q: And, when you find that magic, you’ve got to hold on to it.

Exactly, but you can’t get away from it either. I’ve worked alongside other collaborations, but it follows me everywhere. When I have worked on other projects, those bands are constantly being compared, and it isn’t fair on them, they’re not being given a chance, it’s a waste of their time.

Q: That happens a lot. I’ve actually heard of former members of bands who were very niche, and had a devoted audience, actually try to keep their new projects anonymous, so that that comparison wouldn’t happen.

Yeah, but in England these days, if you do that – and it’s fine, you can do that – nobody comes! It’s hard to get people out to see a band that they’ve never heard of before.

Q: Ah, yeah, you need the name to get people in the door.

You’ve got to get people through the door. It’s not like the old days, when venues were happy to get the bar take and keep tickets cheap. That doesn’t happen anymore, because local authorities are squeezing them for every cent – they’ve got to keep a turnover. I remember when I could go and see three or four bands in a weekend without any issue. I could afford it as a sixteen year old. You couldn’t do that now. These ticket prices start at twenty-five bucks, because the overheads are so high, you know?

Q: Wow, do I miss those days.

Me too.

Q: Tickets are upwards of sixty bucks now, even for little shows, Jesus!

Yeah, I know! I almost had a stroke when somebody I know, who has a daughter who’s a Taylor Swift fan…

Q: Oh no, Taylor Swift is unaffordable.

I’m like “Okay, maybe let’s see what I can do”, and they want a thousand quid!

Q: There’s a reason that a lot of her audience are either rich or celebrities.

If I was on that kind of earning level, I don’t think I’d even charge for gigs.

Q: (Iaughing) I know, it’s ironic, isn’t it?

When I was that age, thirteen, I was into T-Rex. See, Marc Bolan knew the age of his audiences, so he priced his tickets at pocket money levels. Their tickets for Bellevue Arena in 1973 was fifty pence.

Q: Ah, the good old days.

They were selling out two nights at Wembley Arena, you know what I mean? So it’s just greed. But I also know the frightening, frightening cost now of doing a concert – at any level. I mean, we tried to get a tour bus for like two and a half weeks, and they wanted seventy thousand dollars! Just for the bus – before you even put fuel in it!

Q: Yeah, I mean there’s something to be said for bands getting charged out the wazoo and then having to pass the cost along, just like you were saying about venues. So everybody is responsible for that greed.

We did the West, and some of the Midwest earlier this year, and I’m talking to people, and bolting, because it’s not a ten dollar ticket. I’m like “Dude, we can’t be here for that long.” The costs, especially since the pandemic, have tripled.

Q: I know that we’re never going to get fifteen dollar tickets again, I understand that, I do.

If we were selling tickets in the kind of quantities that U2 or Radiohead sell at, I would subsidize it.

Q: When you get to the levels of say – I hate to single people out, but we’re already talking about Taylor, so – Springsteen. I mean, Dude, you don’t have enough money yet - you need to charge your fans a hundred and twenty dollars?

If I was having that conversation with Bruce, and he said “Bro, that’s my tax bill”, I’d probably have a heart attack at that, do you know what I mean? These people have got to be paying millions in taxes. Millions!

Q: Yeah, I’m not taking away from his costs, but his response to the dynamic pricing backlash was not really about that, it was “Well, other people are doing it, why can’t I?” That’s not really a great answer.

I mean, I’m grateful if I can live. My response was always: well, no, I haven’t made millions of dollars, because I can live on one - I have that freedom. I’ve never once had an idea about something I wanted to do, and not been able to find the resources to do it. I’ve never been in that situation, where I want to do something and can’t, because because because. I’ve always used my talent to make the resources happen, and that’s enough for me, I don’t need anything more than that.

Q: It should be enough for all of us. It’s a good life lesson, because we’re all taught to want so much more than we really need.

I always had this dream, growing up, of doing this particular thing that I never thought I’d have the resources to do – it was always there. And then suddenly, my mother passes away in October.

Q: Oh, I’m so sorry!

It’s okay, she was ready to go, she told me that. She makes the me the sole beneficiary of the will, and she leaves me the house, and the house is all paid for. And I grew up in it, and there’s a lot of trauma there, and I don’t want to live in it, right? So then I get an offer for it before I’ve even put in on the market, and I’m like wait a minute, it’s below the inheritance tax. I can make this dream happen. I don’t need to have the worries of a multi-million dollar estate, I don’t want that responsibility. I’m grateful that I’m not in a cubicle selling double glazing in Dagenham, but that’s it. I can do something that I love doing, and people like what I do enough to patronize me, and I’m happy. It’s given me a really good roller coaster life of experiences. My experiences are the most valuable things that I have.

Q: Absolutely, I think everybody should focus less on tangible things, and more on lived experiences.

Yes, that’s the message that I try and get across. When the day comes that we have to leave this construct, whatever this construct is, your experiences are the only things that you can take with you. You can’t take anything else, you can leave all that for someone else to enjoy. If you’ve got a family, that’s fair enough. But at the end of the day, when you jump into that abyss, the only things that you can jump in with are your experiences. And I want to fill that bank with as many experiences as I can, and I’ve been able to do that, you know?

Q: I think this is a great place to leave off, but I do want to add that I’m excited to see how you guys follow up Where Are You? Definitely excited to hear where you are with the sequel to A View From The Hill. And I also to say that you’ve been a huge influence on a lot of people. How about ending with some thank-you's to whomever you think that was for you – like personal influences?

That’s a good question, I wasn’t quite ready for that. Certainly Tony Fletcher is one of the finest human beings I’ve ever encountered, in terms of selflessness and dedication and understanding – completely unbigoted. I lost Tony when I was twenty-six. He was very much involved with this band then. I would say that our current producer, Christophe Bride, is a chip off that old block. My bandmates are a constant inspiration to me, and a pillar of support. All of the people in my life are teaching me things. I do want to say what a great friend to me Kirk Brandon has been. He’s an immensely talented guy whom I’ve really gotten to know. I was in the studio with him while he was reworking some of the Spirit of Destiny stuff. I’m finally in therapy, and his brother, Milo, is my clinician – one of the best in the country, and Kirk got me in there to see him. My life has been a series of traumas that I’ve never really processed, and it impacted my life in so many ways, but I’m so blessed.

Q: Everybody’s a work in progress. I’m happy that you have so much support, and are finding some comfort in being who you are. It’s been wonderful getting to know you, thank you so much for your time.

The Chameleons are:

Mark Burgess, lead vocals and bass

Reg Smithies, guitar

Todd Demma, drums

Stephen Rice. Drums and guitar

Danny Ashberry, keyboards

Band Links:

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YouTube:
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