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Ged: It wasn’t only that we didn’t want to try too hard. We were sort of shocked by the desperate dash for fame by our peers, as though the purpose of writing songs was to sign to a major and get on Top Of The Pops. I hated this approach. I liked things to be more open-ended, I hated high production values. Like these old idiots in studios sagely telling you that there’s too much distortion or all of the other crap. That never bothered me. You can listen to anything if it’s good. I love the fact Rev Spirit is in mono. It’s because we were doing it ourselves and we were inexperienced, but even so it’s a million times greater than all of the other stuff around at the time.
Q There is a lot of stuff being written about Dylan and his Rolling Thunder revue at the moment, and the cast of characters involved. Are you aware that the people involved in the Wild Swans have the same heroic status for another generation in the way Dylan & co. do for an earlier one? Whose fault is it (yours or ours) that the history books do not reflect this? Have you been too nonchalant about your own legacy that it is only now that the back catalogue is seeing the light of day? This seems to be a trait of many of the best people involved in the late-'70s/early-'80s music e.g. you, Subway Sect, Blue Orchids, and many more.
Paul: Whose fault? It’s yours of course.
Ged: I think we were too unconcerned and terminally nonchalant. Perhaps it’s impossible to have one eye on history. We were living in Pete De Freitas’ and Paul’s flat on the top floor of a gloomy Victorian villa in a run-down part of the city. We were stoned to the point of incapacity nearly all the time and never professional the rest. I’m convinced we were doing it for different reasons than everyone else. We certainly weren’t trying to be successful. In fact you could argue that we undermined our chances by consciously making decisions that would harm our careers. We turned down nearly everything we were offered. TV, radio, press, photo sessions. We just weren’t interested in feeding that machine. We thought exposure would kill us.
