Stuffed to the gills with the coolest in garage rock sounds around, THE LEN PRICE 3'S debut album "Chinese Burn" (out now on Laughing Outlaw) is already sounding like one of this year's best debuts. It's a scorching record, with 15 stripped-down, but melody-hugging tunes crammed into 31 minutes and finds the trio (none of whom answer to the name Len Price, incidentally) tapping into fertile seams of punk, mod and freakbeat, as well as the kind of full-on garage rock their Medway hinterland has previously put on the map thanks to the likes of Billy Childish.
The LP3 are due to go out ripping up stages around the UK and beyond in support of the record, but W&H were never ones to let the grass grow and felt a strategic call ought to be placed to singer/ guitarist GLENN PAGE before he sets out to spread the gospel.
Glenn is brilliant company and an all-round top bloke. He's witty, informative and entertaining and has been through the mill in the lower reaches of the biz enough to have no illusions about the 'glamourous' aspects of rock'n'roll. However, he's never less than positive and enthusiastic and why not? He's fronting one of the UK's best trios after all.
We start with the early days of THE LEN PRICE 3, which in themselves show how determined and resounrceful the band have been in carving out a niche for themselves. Glenn, old chap, what's all this about being banned from the Maidstone pub you rehearsed in, only to go back and book more time under a different name? Is that a true story?
"Yeah, that's a very true story," laughs Glenn.
"Steve (Huggins - LP3 bassist) lives in Maidstone. He knew Neil (Fromow - LP3 drummer) and had booked this pub back room in Maidstone, which was often let as a rehearsal space for bands. So we go in to rehearse and from the off, you can tell it's not going down too well. By the third song, the landlord's poppong his head round the door and looking pissed off, telling us to turn it down. Apparently it was the drums that were the main problem."
"Anyway," he continues, "at the end of the session he takes our money first - of course - and then says categorically that they wouldn't be having us back because of the noise. So we struggle for a couple of weeks and can't find anywhere else, until Steve - being the cheeky chap he is - phones them back and gives 'em a different name, when he knew the landlord would be away (laughs)."
So you got back in - through the back door route, so to speak?
"Yeah, right," Glenn giggles.
"We go back and this woman's nominally in charge in the landlord's absence and it's really funny because she's giving us a few looks and then she says "Um....weren't you the band who were banned from here before?" And of course, we're "Nah, love, not us!" he finishes, laughing heartily.
But such are the necessary little victories in the early days of our best bands, and thankfully the Len Price 3 have no problem with perseverance, for since then they have been making quite a name for themselves as a feted live act on the London/ Medway circuit. Of course, hailing from the same neck of the woods as cult garage rock heroes such as Billy Childish (Buff Medways/ Thee Headcoats), The Prisoners and The Mikshakes may be a double-edged sword in the long run. Do you feel part of the 'lineage' where those bands are concerned Glenn?
"Mmm...I dunno, I mean when you're on the outside of it, it's easy to flag it up as a lineage, a family tree kind've thing," Glenn considers.
"In a spiritual sense, I can see a link," he admits, "but then we don't have any direct contact with those people, there's no tangible connection. Also, on the other side of the coin, I've no idea what they feel about us! Maybe we're tapping into something, because discovering what bands like Thee Headcoats and The Prisoners sounded like was an epiphany to me, it clicked on a visceral level. So I certainly like those bands, but then I don't listen to much current music, and I've always been into '60s bands and punk anyway, so it's probably inevitable we'll sound the way we do."
Of course, as you recorded "Chinese Burn" in mono and favour vintage valve equipment, you may tend to get slagged for being excessively 'retro' in some quarters. Does that worry you at all?
"No, doesn't worry us in the slightest," shrugs Glenn.
"I mean, if you set yourself up that way playing what we do, people either get it and like it, or just dismiss it. I mean, some people slag us off for being retro and saying stuff like "oh, you sound like you should be in "Austin Powers" and suchlike. But it's water off a duck's back really....I mean, we all love The Kinks, The Who, The Clash and so on, so we seek to make similarly exciting, vsceral music. That's what matters to us. Otherwsie, we don't really care what anyone says. As we all know, the music biz is so fickle anyway."
Very true. But of course, the Len Price boys have encountered elements of the NME'S much-vaunted 'London's Burning' crowd in the recent past, because they've previously supported the infleuntial Libertines at Chatham's Tap'n'Tin - lest we forget, the venue for Peter Doherty's infamous 'Freedom' gig in October 2003. Do you feel any sort of affiliation with those bands, Glenn?
"To be quite honest, I pay precious little attention to the modern music scene," says Glenn plainly.
"For instance, I've heard of bands like The Paddingtons, but I coldn't tell you much about them! We don't feel part of any scene, especially as this year's vogue seems to be for bands aping the early 1980s, which is miles away from the sort of thing we're doing. So no, we're isolationists, in the sense, I guess," he laughs.
"But in any case, aside from The Buff Medways, there aren't any local Medway bands who really sound like us at present either. We're mates with some of the other local bands and like what some of them are doing, but not because they sound anything like us. And in London, we don't feel we're part of anything going on, any kind of scene."
Of course, you make reference to the locality with songs like "Medway Eye" and "Chatham Town Spawns Devils" on the album. The latter doesn't paint a very falttering portrait of the town, does it Glenn? The references to skag-addled prostitutes, villainy and underworld types etc? Is it really like that and what's it really like creatively?
"Well, in terms of being in a band, I imagine it's just like any other provincial part of England," says Glen evenly.
"I mean, I thought it was a shithole growing up, because the naval dockyward closed in 1984 and the whole area went into economic decline for years. I remember my father was on the dole for a long time, and it wasn't a good place to be. But, at the same time, it seems to exert a strange magnetic pull too."
"For a band, there's not much of an artistic scene, and you could view it as a hotbed for philistines, there's lots of bad cover bands and so on..."
Yeah, but like you say, what regional area doesn't have those?
"Exactly," says Glenn. "And to be fair the venues have improved to a degree, the Tap'n'Tin's good and there are one or two more, plus last Autumn they actually had the First Medway Arts Festival, which was a positive step in the right direction. I suppose it's a love/ hate thing....I mean, any port town tends to have a dark and beastly image and Chatham WAS a hive of prostitution at one time....it still continues today in that there's an area called The Dirty Mile where all the streetwalkers operate and the area is rife with heroin and crack."
Sadly, an overview that fits a lot of places these days. But let's get back to positivity and return to the album in general. It's very immediate and exciting and your songs often work well in the 1 minute 30 framework, never mind 3 mins. Do you consciously try to bring in songs at around the 2 minute mark?
"Yeah, especially when we started out...which I think says a lot about my attention span," laughs Glenn.
"But a lot of it came because when we started out we were listening to The Who a lot and also I was checking out a lot of bands locally and they were doing things the likes of Mogwai and Spiritualized were doing....long, intense, drone-y things. That's fine, admirable enough, but I felt songs were getting lost along the way, and ultimately I've always loved songs and songcraft. In any case, from a punter's point of view, I always feel you need songs that hook you in from the first few bars."
"That was why I started writing," he continues. "If I could get a band off the ground, that was the ethos - hooky songs, say it quickly and get out again (laughs). Though gradually, some longer songs have begun to seep in, some as long as three minutes! But we do tend to edit quite viciously, we don't leave unneccesary solos in and so on."
I like the way that - as the band's main lyricist - you tackle subjects which differ from the 'realtionship' norm. The band's new single "Christian In The Desert", for example, is inspired by Luis Bunuel's "Simon In The Desert". Does film and literature influence you a lot?
"Yeah, well sometimes, though while I enjoy reading and films I wouldn't describe myself as a bookworm or a movie head," Glenn muses.
"Actually, I seem to have a perverted fascination for people who put themselves through great suffering for what they consider a just cause...that sort've led me to Bunuel's work.....I was watching "Simon In The Desert" for about the 19th time and I'd had a few lagers....I'd heard about Faust improvising the soundtrack to "Nosferatu" and probably because of the beer (laughs) I turned the sound down and got my guitar and tried to write my own soundtrack....hence "Christian In The Desert". There again, it's the only time I've tried that method. And the film's only 40 minutes in length, so I dunno you'd get all that much material from it."
Oh, I don't know! Black Francis got plenty of material from it, didn't he?
"Yeah, "Debaser"....that's cool, for sure!"
Agreed. But at a tangent, there's "The Last Hotel", which is also drawn from an apparently non-rock'n'roll subject: old peoples' homes. Lyrically, it's a depressingly real account of life and death in such institutions and pulls no punches whatsoever. I assume this comes from experience with an elderly relative, Glenn?
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"How deep and dark can you go, really?" replies Glenn quietly.
"It is from experience, yeah. As far as care homes go, it seemed the one my Gran went to was good on the surface. She has money stashed because my Grandad died from an industrial-related incident and it paid out to my Gran. But money doesn't buy you everything, it's true. She was a sharp lady when she went in, very much on the ball, and within a few months the will to live has been sucked out of her. She's in what I can only describe as a spiral of dementia."
Glenn's dark commentary makes me recall the experiences my own Grandmother suffered at the end of her life, and I feel for him.
"Yeah, well it's tough when someone you care about doesn't register anything. You walk in, the smell of cleaning fluid and faeces hits you and it's so utterly depressing. The worst thing is that there doesn't appear to be any alternative I can see for her."
All this would make the song extremely hard to take, except that the spangly, Rickenbacker-fuelled tune and Glenn and Neil's great Badfinger-style harmonies work beautifully, giving the song the necessary gravitas. On a more positive note, were the harmonies there from the beginning with the Len Price 3?
"Yeah, well we've always been about having a balance between power, short and sharp songs and some sweet harmonies," admits Glenn.
"It's an intuitive thing with us, which is great. Neil's very good at melodic harmonies as well as being a fantastic drummer, and he always seems to know where to bring in something like that, and I think it's become a little more prominent in the last year or so. Steve's playing is also very inituitive, you don't have to tell him what to do, he instinctively knows. It's a great set up."
I would certainly agree with that. But back to individual songs for a moment: "Amsterdam" I like a lot because it's superficially very breezy, but has a really sad lyrical twist. Indeed, the song's protagonist is ultimate pretty seedy, as he "can pay" for what he needs. What was the inspiration behind this one?
"Er, that's a funny one," Glenn considers, "though if I'm honest it's really my stag do in Amsterdam that inspired it."
Not literally, I hope...
"No, nothing to do with me directly, I'm glad to say, but a couple of my mates felt the need to go somewhere seedy to pay for sex and my stag do was as good an excuse as they could get (laughs slightly mordantly.)"
"It's dark, sad stuff in the light of day, really. These are guys with wives at home, jobs and mortgages, and here they are on the trail of nookie for money. It's briefly funny, but also poignant and sad at the same time."
Another one from the album that might superficially confuse people is the song "Shirley Crabtree". If you didn't know any better, you might initially think it was a song about a love interest of the band's, but the 'Shirley Crabtree' in question is/ was actually Big Daddy, the infamous wrestler who was famous during the 1970s/ 80s. Are you a closet saddo - like this writer - who used to watch the wrestling on Sunday afternoons then, Glenn?
"Yeah, yeah, absolutely," says Glenn.
"There was something great about wrestling back then, wasn't there? It's not like the American wrestling that you get now, and it was great because it was anything but airbrushed. It was kind've naff, but really enjoyable and of course the outcome was always preordained. Big Daddy would always win, though, wouldn't he? He was a real showman. It's amazing the amount of useless information you lock away and caryy round with you, isn't it?"
Absolutely. At one time it was cricket facts and figures with me. I was like a walking Wisden annual...
"Hur hur! Well, I can still rattle off all the players in my 1982 Panini Football Stickers annual, if that's any good to you?" laughs Glenn.
Maybe later, mate. But listen: I'm intrigued by how a band from the Medway area should end up on an Australian label, like Laughing Outlaw. What gives Glenn?
"OK, well it's a bit of a convoluted one," replies Glenn.
"When the Len Price 3 started off, we decided there and then we weren't gonna go the tried and tested route of touting our wares to record companies. I mean, me and Neil especially have spent too long getting kicked in the bollocks with various projects previously as it is."
Yeah, it's an old story, isn't it?
"Yeah, so we said fuck off to that this time," Glenn continues.
"This time we decided we'd do what we do, record stuff and sell it out of suitcases at gigs. Neil's really good at IT stuff and he's into manufacturing sleeves and so on. Really, we wanted to operate on our own, unpretentious level, which is why we chose a name like The Len Price 3 to begin with, because it's totally anti-celebrity and unpretentious. So anyway, the idea was not to bother hawking demos around and getting after management companies and we were firm about that."
So what happened?
"Pure chance intervened," replies Glenn.
"A mate of ours had an album out on Laughing Outlaw, with Mick Murphy who used to be in (well known garage outfit) The Dentists. I know he loved our stuff, but he was so into it he sent it to Laughing Outlaw. Anyway, we weren't aware they we interested in us and then in June 2004, Paul Glover, the MD from Laughing Outlaw calls me out of the blue on my mobile at work and left a message saying (adopts excellent Aussie accent) "Love the stuff, mate, let's talk about putting it out."
Just like that?
"Yeah, but it was hilarious because of the time difference we kept trying to call each other, leaving messages and failing spectacularly. It was really funny. But it was truly purely by chance our mate passed the CD on to him...we hadn't given it a second thought!"
Genius. But now "Chinese Burn" is finally among us, I assume you're gearing up for loads of gigs? Your attacking sound suggests you're a band who thrive on live performance?
"Yeah, well we do love playing live and in an ideal world we'd all jack in our day jobs...." says Glenn.
I sense a 'but' coming...
"But yeah, unfortunately this has come rather late to us and we have mortgages, jobs and wives to think about," he continues.
"We fit in as many shows as we can, and it has been a bit of an issue with the record company actually, because - fair enough - they want us to get out there. But it's not easy, I mean, it's difficult when you've got a day job to justify going up to Stratford-on-Avon to play to five people on a Wednesday night or whatever. It's fine on one level, though, and we're getting out as much as we can. The diary's fully booked for every weekend next month, for instance."
That's what we want to hear. Glenn, you're a gentleman and W&H wish you all the best with the gigs, not to mention getting down the front at as many a you can. Final question: do you feel the Len Price 3 fit in with any aspect of the UK music scene at present or are you perennial outsiders?
"On a popular, NME level, we don't fit in at all," he replies, plainly.
"I mean, for example, a couple of months ago, a guy from Sony came down to see us rehearse in Chatham and he really liked us, but at the moment the vogue's for all things 80s and that's nothing like us at all. The fact of the matter is one man at a record company could absolutely love us, but he wo't take us on because we wouldn't cut it with the majors, we're not a fad that can be marketed. "
"But then," he says, coming full circle, "Billy Childish always did his own thing regardless and he's kept his street credibility and status better than most who are briefly the next big thing. I'd rather be remembered as someone who made bloody great records rather than someone who had one big hit album and fifteen years later no-one everyone has forgotten about."
Absolutely, Glenn. And, believe me, with "Chinese Burn", the Len Price 3 have made their first bloody great record. Let's hope it's the first of many.
"Chinese Burn" is out now on Laughing Outlaw.
(www..thelenprice3.com )
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