If there’s one band in Britain who have their fingers on the pulse more than any other I would say it is Control. Frontman Iain Kilgallon is a man never afraid to let loose lyrically and he tackles everything he sets his sights on head-on with a no compromise attitude. With his bandmates in Control he’s been hitting nail after nail square on the head with an arsenal of street punk songs that capture the essence of futility and frustration faced by the working classes on a daily basis. For the last few years I have been following the band closely and have felt immense pride seeing them go from strength to strength. With their new album they upped the ante even more, both lyrically and musically, and I can say with my hand on my heart that, for me, no other album has even come close to competing with ‘Ballad Of The Working Man’ this year. It has rarely left my stereo and is hands down the most played CD my neighbours have had to listen to over the last few months. With that in mind I thought it was high time Uber Rock sat down with Iain and got the lowdown on just what makes him and Control tick… and how likely they are to explode!

 

Iain, thanks for taking time out to talk to us today. With a new album to promote Control must have a pretty hectic schedule right now. How is life treating the band at the moment?

 

The band seems to be on a massive upwards spiral at the moment which is great news as we put a lot of time and effort in to the band as we believe we have a good thing going on. We recently played shows from the north of Scotland to the south coast of England, headlining venues the more established punk bands play regularly and filled every single one, it was amazing. I think it is a combination of the Rancid supports, hard work and 3 records which all seem to have been very well received, whatever it is, it is nice to see there is an interest building for the band.

 

You played the Rebellion festival in Blackpool in August. The Punk world seems to be positively thriving at the minute. What are your thoughts on the scene right now?

 

Yeah, Rebellion was amazing for us this year. We were told we had the biggest turnout of the weekend in the venue we played which, if true, is amazing. Whether it was or wasn’t, there were certainly a lot of people there to see us. Rebellion is a fantastic weekend and does so much for the punk scene here in the UK and I personally think without it, the scene would not be a quarter of the size it is at the moment. I always hear the usual gripes about the ticket prices but for the amount of quality bands and entertainment the ticket price gets you, makes it absolutely amazing value, it really is. If anyone does not believe this, then try putting on a massive show like this with 200 odd acts and see how you go. It is a massive operation and the scene should appreciate all the hard work and effort that Jennie and Daz and their team put in, not complain, as without them, the scene would crumble in front of our eyes. Like I say, I would like to see people who think they could do a better job put their money where their mouths are and they would soon start to think very differently. You just need to look at the amount of people who have tried in recent years to put on other punk festivals in this country, they have almost all been complete disasters.

 

Why do you think Punk has enjoyed such the resurgence it has over the last few years? Would you put it down to the current social climate or is it simply because the quality of the bands coming through lately has been pulling new people in?

 

I personally think it is a combination of Rebellion Festival, some good bands treading the boards to add much needed new blood to the old bands, and the social climate which certainly gives us plenty of great song topics!

 

Punk has always given the minority a voice, a platform from which to project their views towards a society that would otherwise probably overlook them with indifference. You guys certainly come out swinging for the underdog. What prompted you to form Control originally?

 

I played in Beerzone for years and was always the songwriter and one day I went to see Rancid down in Brighton with Shifty, my long time pal and band mate and I mentioned that I wanted to start a new band as although Beerzone were a very well known act, we were watching this country go down the pan. It was time to stop writing about drunk people and to sing about things that affected people like ourselves in their every day lives. I personally think it is the best decision I ever made as a lot of people thought we were crazy after all the relative success of Beerzone.

 

I guess it would be wrong to describe Control as a “political band” but politics, or rather, being let down by and lied to by politicians is a theme that raises its head regularly throughout your albums. I read an old interview you did while in Beerzone where you talked about the reason your previous band, Intensive Care, called it a day at the end of the eighties, because politics was becoming to ingrained in the music scene and you just wanted to play and have fun. So my question is, what changed?

 

We are a rock & roll band with a message. A band who puts in to song messages for the hard pressed, decent folk around the world. If you look at some of the biggest and best bands ever, like The Clash, SLF, Dead Kennedys, Angelic Upstarts and many more, they all had messages in their songs and if they can do it and just be called punk/oi! bands, why can’t we? It is about the music and if you get that right, your message comes across so much better. What changed, I got older and as we get older we see the bigger picture and it’s usually not very nice.

 

So do you believe that in these modern days of seemingly ever growing apathy on the part of the general public that a “protest song” (for want of a better description) can still actually make a difference and change anything?

 

I am not saying any protest song can change anything these days but surely it is better to voice your protests/opinions in song rather than just bow your head and accept things that are basically, completely flawed. Without voicing your opinion, you may as well give up and become one of the living dead. It may not change the world, but it gives you common ground and sentiment with people all over the world and people love a song to have a message they feel they can relate to. I can’t tell you the amount of people who come up to us at shows and tell us that every song could have come from their thoughts. It means we are doing something right.

 

Your lyrics seem to flow with a natural rage/ire, I’m wondering, how long you spend fine tuning them? Do they come out pretty much spot on first time or are they the most difficult part of the song to perfect?

 

Anyone who knows me knows, they come straight out. When we sing “it’s from the heart, it’s from the soul” or “start a band and hit the stage, channel this incessant rage” it is 100% authentic without any need for fine tuning.

 

What comes to you first when Control are working on a new song, the music or the message?

 

Usually the melody for the chorus comes along and as I have loads of topical ideas going round my head all the time. I put some lyrics to the melody, sing it on to my phone and then sort the rest out as we go. I always have 15-20 songs on the go. I don’t have time to rehearse all the time but do my best to get with the lads as much as possible.

 

Lyrically the new album is archetypal Control but there’s a few new things for you on there musically. How did you approach this album differently than the previous two?

 

It may be an age thing, ie: getting older/maturing, but I have been coming up with a lot of more folky/celtic sounding melodies without even trying so when I sang them to Terry and Shifty (who I jam with when I have an idea) I mentioned the celtic sound and some of the tracks could not have been used any other way. The way I think is as long as the bones of the album are similar to what people are expecting then surely we can have the right to use a little bit of artistic licence to see how new ideas go down? Many bands do this and if you listen to Rancid, they always have the experimental tracks towards the end of their records and the material is superb.

 

If you could talk us through some of the tracks on there then and give us some insight into the story or feeling behind them. May as well start with the title track, ‘Ballad Of The Working Man’…

 

This song sums up everything that our forefathers had to go through to try and survive and to a lesser extent it’s still the case today. The chosen few benefit from the expertise and hard work of the working classes and it will never change and if the little man tried to creak away and start on his own, his boss who very often also owned the property the worker and his family lived in, would throw them out on to the street if they threatened to leave. In the 1800s, early 1900s very often the land owner was also the factory/mill/mine owner as well as owning the grocery store and the pub, so every penny he paid his workers came back to him in kind with over-inflated prices for groceries and on beer, it was an absolute travesty and went undisturbed for many years. You hear the stories of miners who had one day off so they left for work before their children woke and returned long after they went to bed, it is no sort of life at all.

 

‘I’m Not Doing It’…

 

Long gone are the times when a degree or some form of education guaranteed you a well paid job, thanks to thirty years of selling off all our assets and complete mismanagement of our country we now find ourselves in the position where no jobs are permanent any more and every vacancy is chased by hundreds of people if it is half decent paying and more and more people seem to be just giving up and taking benefits to live on as sometimes they receive more than working people, you could not make it up. I often wonder if you showed people even only 20 years ago a film about the UK today and the state it is in, they would think you were away with the fairies. Thatcher started it all off by selling our assets and bringing credit cards to the table so people could live the glamorous lives of the people they saw on TV, and Tony B Liar carried on where she left off with an absolute abortion of a period in power where he simply did the polar opposite of everything he said he would do when he was trying to win votes, but hey, don’t they all?

 

‘Liberty’…

 

As above, really just aimed at the spineless, self-serving politicians who get in to power and then try monitor our lives at every turn. If we are the most filmed country on the planet, how come the crime rate is going through the roof?

 

‘Another Country Gone Wrong’…

 

Mainstream TV, Radio and Newspapers fill everyone’s lives with absolute shit, from white trash TV, glamour shows full of brain dead, perma-tanned clowns, talent shows with absolutely NO talent on show, absolute dross on the main music stations, ignoring anything with any originality or balls, and they feed little things through shit like Eastenders so much that the less intelligent start to think the things they see are the norm, it is all so crass and stupid. We have loads of good things in the country and a many intelligent people and ideas, why fill our heads with brain dead dross?

 

On a lighter note there’s the other side to Control, a vibrant, fun-filled blast of friendship and loyalty. The ‘Tattoos’ video for instance, that looked like it was a lot of fun. Can you tell us about how that came together?

 

We were invited to join Randale Records, who were highly recommended to us by Rancid among others, and one of the provisos my end was that if we move over, we saw the importance of a promo video to promote the album we would do for them. Diana at Randale agreed and duly sent over the film maker from Italy who spent a couple of days with us at a show in London that we played with Old Firm Casuals and wanted to film us in Camden, but I said no as I wanted it filmed in our local boozer, The Swan in Crawley, Sussex as the guy who runs it puts bands on twice a week and all the guys and girls who drink there are great people. So it happened and it seems to have gone down great so happy days.

 

The last track on the album, ‘Simple Soul’, is another tune that’s buzzing with positivity and one that really stands out for me. How did that one come about? It’s not a standard Control number.

 

I had the chorus for a while and knew it could only be an upbeat ‘celtic’ sounding number and pictured being on a ferry in the Outer Hebrides every time I sang it, so it had to go that way. It is about giving people a chance as too many people just turn away from people in need. Very un-Control, but when you think about it, not really, it is helping the down trodden and sticking together.

 

You’ve shared stages with some of the best (and had plenty of them in that ‘Tattoos’ video too) but is there anyone else who you’d like to line up with. A dream combo if you will.

 

To be honest with you we have been lucky enough to tour with Rancid and the Dropkick Murphys and play shows with SLF, Damned, Dead Kennedys, UK SUBS, Agnostic Front and The Exploited so you would have to go out of the Punk world as we have been so lucky to play with nearly all the bands we grew up on so anything else would just be greedy,

 

Hopefully we’ll get a chance to see you on the road sometime soon anyway. Is there anything in the pipeline regarding live shows you can share with us?

 

We never stop playing to be honest with you and try play at least two weekends every month. We have some big news for 2014 that we can’t announce yet but we can say we have been added to the Ruhrpott Rodeo in Germany with Cock Sparrer in May as well as festival appearances booked for Sweden, Germany, Belgium and Poland already booked and confirmed for the new year as well as other shows booked all over the UK as well as around Europe being arranged for 2014. It promises to be a very busy year for the band and of course the constant new material that enters this head of mine 😉

 

Two final questions if I could. The Hooligan Rock N Roll Party is running for election. What would the top 5 points of your manifesto be to get Britain back on track?

 

1 – Common Sense: There is a real lack of common sense in almost all the policies that are thrown at us, let’s just have things that would work and help the every day lives of our nation

 

2 – Quarter the price of fuel. The government may need the duty on it to help fund all the mess that we have been left with and the enormous cost of benefits/welfare they have to find but if they did this they would find that people had more money in their pockets to spend so restaurants, shops, pubs, you name it would all benefit from this which in turn would protect jobs and the government would get the money they lost from fuel duty through a myriad of business benefits, but that would be too easy.

 

3 – Abolish car parking fees. Only in this stupid country are people taxed for trying to go in to towns and city centres to try buy things from their local stores, no wonder people are buying online, it is absolutely pathetic and I can just imagine the Americans being asked to pay to go to the mall, it simply wouldn’t happen.

 

4 – Bring back the death sentence for any crimes to do with children or the elderly. In this day of forensic science and technology there can be no excuse for not getting these vile bastards off our streets permanently.

 

5 – Take back our utilities so the power companies can no longer just increase prices whenever they feel like it, buy them back or put draconian powers in place to at least control them. It is an national disgrace that they are allowed to do this and they think by saying they will decrease prices by 3% for the summer months actually cuts any ice, they are mistaken as everyone knows no-one has their heating on then so then they increase the prices by 10% running into the colder months, are they so blinded by their greed to pay their fat-cat shareholders dividends to see that each time they do this, thousands of elderly folk who are living below the bread line thanks to us having the worst state old age pension in the western world, simply have to choose to eat or heat? The government and the power company bastards should hang their heads in shame.

 

And last but not least… Did Punk Rock really ruin your life?

 

It certainly ruined my bank balance, but I wouldn’t swap it for the world!

 

 

Pick up your ‘Ballad Of The Working Man’ CD here: http://www.mainstagemerch.com/control-ballad-of-the-working-man-cd/

Or if you’d prefer a nice vinyl copy: http://www.mainstagemerch.com/control-ballad-of-the-working-man-vinyl/

 

http://www.hooliganrocknroll.com/

 

To pick up your copy of ‘Ballad Of The Working Man’ on Amazon – CLICK HERE