Interviewer: Best known for being the frontman of The Goths, despite the fact that he’s now launched a solo career, my guest today is Johnny Stowmarries
In the late’80s he teamed up with Percy Blakeney to fly the post-punk ethereal flag
After disbanding in 1993 he went on to launch The Goths on Spotify more than a decade later
He’s now launching his solo album ‘Weather Being’ and planning going out with it in 2023
Interviewer: We’ll hear from Johnny after this, his choice, Jimmy and the Boys’ ‘Not Like Everybody Else’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxmsl1e6PG4
Jimmy and the Boys and Not Like Everybody Else, a bit of a milestone in the life of my guest Johnny Stowmarries. So what do you remember about that song?
Johnny: Well I’d just finished state school and I was starting to start my first band. This came out.
It was very different, I mean it was a song by Ray Davies in the first place, recorded by The Kinks.
But in the hands of Jimmy and the Boys, it wasn’t just an anthem of non-conformity, because it was quite unconventional of The Kinks, but in the hands of Jimmy and the Boys, it conveyed something quite a bit more defiant than all that.
It was very glam, I mean you see them on Countdown, they were very glam, and you got the sense they were about to burst into disco, but then they pushed the barriers in a totally different way.
It’s a landmark really because it came out of that end-of-the-seventies atmosphere, which was disco, very straight-forward, formulaic in terms of the music world, of what you could listen to.
Suddenly, this was something that was a bit more interesting and bit more off-the-wall, which didn’t exactly go down a disco path, it sort of stayed in that sort of very unconventional, defiant, non-conformity spot.
I think it was a landmark. They had so much style and such a great sound. It was encouraging that something unusual could break through. I think that was the important thing about it.
Interviewer: Was The Goths just a music movement or were you wanting the subculture to genuinely grow?
Johnny: Well I mean I’d have had to have been a bit naive I think to. I mean I was 23 by the time The Goths got going, so I was getting a bit long in the tooth to be dreaming those sorts of dreams.
It was a platform for trying to get out ideas, you know, philosophical ideas.
But whether any of those kind of ideas would find fertile ground; that was not to be expected.
Interviewer: The thing I seem to remember is the Toxic Garden Gnomes, you were in them in the early ’80s
Johnny: That’s right, yeah, well I ran into them back in ’83 at a party, just over the hill from where I lived. Some mates from high school had taken me along.
The Gnomes said come over and jam at our mum’s place. So I got into their band doing gigs straight away with them, at the Aussie Nash Pub on Stanley Street.
It was very easy for them to select me into their band for their gigs, it was pub rock the whole time.
That was in ’83, about the time Temple of Love came out, The Sisters of Mercy, and that was doubly encouraging because suddenly here again was something a bit different breaking through.
You heard Temple of Love at Hades nightclub, where we used to play when it was The Tube Club in the mid-’80s, which was a pub called the Lands Office, when The Goths first started playing.
We already knew about Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure, Bauhaus, and Joy Division.
This was this music movement just ballooning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi7lOB4PndY
Interviewer: You’ve got something new happening.
Johnny: I have indeed yeah, I mean lockdown was very good to me, it confined me to one place and I started working on a new album.
I’ve got a lot to thank lockdown for. I’m not sure if it would have turned out as well if it hadn’t been for those circumstances.
It’s called ‘Weather Being’ and hopefully I’m going to be going out with it.
Interviewer: Going back to The Goths, any memorable gigs? I suppose there’s loads.
Johnny: Yeah, yeah there’s absolutely loads. I mean, there were so many magic moments you know on stage and I’ll keep those memories with me for a long time.
Interviewer: Good, well how about leaving us with a record by someone other than The Goths?
Johnny: Ha ha ! Yeah, well, Nick Cave was putting out album number six when The Goths had first started playing in the city. The Ship Song was a CD single as The Good Son first single.
It didn’t really do that well in 1990, but, again, it was a breakthrough; it was a breakthrough of something alternative coming through and it got, or was, highly acclaimed.
You know I’ve got a lot of respect for Nick Cave and what he’s achieved. Fabulous production by The Bad Seeds, it just sounds great even today, it’s a really great sounding record.
Interviewer: It certainly is. Well Johnny, all the best with the album ‘Weather Being’, the tour and thanks.
Johnny: Thanks nice to talk to you. All the best. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0spQCw35D4