Interviewer: Going back to the early eighties do you still speak to Mick Wade from Toxic Garden Gnomes? Because I read somewhere that you played guitar and keyboards in Toxic Garden Gnomes before you formed The Goths
Johnny: Mph. Yeah, very early on, yeah. I saw him on Facebook. He texted me there quite a few years ago.
I saw him on there then, like 2013, and when I did see him on there it was really nice to see him.
I don’t, sort of like, you know go for pints with him or anything like that, but I kind of know him.
Interviewer: I was wondering how good were the Gnomes because that was the band you played in previous to you forming The Goths, wasn’t it?
Johnny: How good were they? Not very good. No. Not when I played in them, that is.
That’s why you haven’t heard anything of them from back in those days. They became really good.
Everyone’s first few bands are rubbish. It’s just part of the learning process of being in a band, really. So no, they weren’t very good then. But later on, of course, they got really, really great.
I truly can’t remember it because it was so long ago. It was just kids playing around in bedrooms back then, when I played in them. I don’t really know. It’s just something that happened.
I can’t really remember anything about it. It’s part of my childhood really. It’s not really anything. It wasn’t a proper professional band or anything back then.
I wasn’t who I am today back then, so I can’t really compare apples with oranges back then.
Interviewer: Is it a natural way for you to go now, working on your solo album? It’s been a few months.
Johnny: Is it a natural way? Umm. Yeah, it feels like the right record…I mean, the record I want to make.
It feels like this is what I want to do at this stage, starting a solo career.
I didn’t want to make another record within the sort of restrictive mechanism, being in The Goths.
I wanted to go somewhere outside of that and get kind of free of that, and not make another record based around The Goths.
I wanted to make a kind of…whatever this is.
This is like a sort of a kind of a ‘just-me’ based record, with a kind of ‘backing-with-it’ kind of thing. It’s a solo variation of whatever.
But still it’s enough of a variation for me to feel justified in thinking this is still very difficult.
Interviewer: Do you recall the first time you thought maybe I need to do something on my own now?
Johnny: Yeah. Very recently. It wasn’t, and it never was a kind of, you know, part of some long term plan.
I didn’t sort of think, back in the eighties or nineties, I want to be a solo artist.
It’s just something that’s happened.
It happened pretty much because I had to finish The Goths…because I didn’t feel there was anything going on anywhere musically anymore there now.
And, you know, when you feel as though you’re at a creative dead-end, sort of thing, it’s impossible to carry on with it.
If you’re in a band, unless you want to be like a karaoke band, and just play your ‘old-hits-around the-world’ sort of thing, it’s kind of fairly pointless.
I’ve never wanted to do that.
I’ve always wanted to, and I’ve always thought the point of being in a band is to be writing new material, writing new albums and going forward, not going backwards.
And when I realised I was kind of at a dead-end, creatively, I thought, well, I’ve got to do something else now.
And then I started this record, ‘Weather Being’, which is a kind of project I did with my squadron. I transitioned to the solo artist Stowmarries.
And I’ve enjoyed making that happen. I thought, well, I want to make a solo record now.
It was just like the next stage in things. It wasn’t something that was premeditated.
It was just something that happened.