Gagz Williams – No Choice – Uber Rock Interview Exclusive
Written by Johnny H
Sunday, 17 May 2015 03:40
Since the dawn of the eighties Cardiff punks No Choice have been doing their thing their way, releasing 3 much revered studio albums and playing many shows around the globe in support of them. I caught up with the band’s frontman Gagz recently to see what is happening with the highly anticipated follow up to their ‘Thru It’ LP and ended up with a truly exclusive piece of news. So read on to find out what his shock announcement actually is……..
Gagz thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me today.
Cheers Johnny, and thanks for wanting to do this.
I’m not going to beat around the bush you asked me to set this meeting so you could make an announcement exclusively on Uber Rock…so the floor is all yours……
No Choice as a band has now finished.
I have to admit I’m gutted to hear this Gagz, what is the reason behind this decision?
It’s been on the cards for a while really. Work, families and just finding the ideal time we’re all available to practice/jam sums up the most of it. I guess but the final nail was Paul our bass player and all round lovely guy was not only wanting to spend more time with his family, he found his enthusiasm waning, mainly at gigs. He enjoys the gigs when playing and enjoys jamming in Stompbox (rehearsal room in Cardiff) but ultimately it took him away from his family more than he wanted. A good enough reason and fair play to him. When Ada left a couple of years back, we had the rest of us already getting songs together for the ‘Thru it’ album, no offence to Ada but he had a lot going on in his life and we were in gear and motoring on tunes and lyrics and we carried on and got the album done. What I mean is, we were all in sync and Ada not being there only served to pull us closer as a unit. With Paul calling it a day, I said to the guys I didn’t want No Choice to go on with only the singer left from the original and ‘Dry River Fishing’ line ups.
No Choice didn’t need to prove anything, more importantly than being a band, we were and are friends and all just thought it’s time we leave it. Paul finishing was good for him and it’s a good time for the rest of us to go out the same time as him. Plus I didn’t wanna be like Charlie Harper….., hanging out with the young pups to churn out the old songs and offer fuck all other than a generic jam for those reliving their past. No Choice has always been about doing and playing what feels good, we really didn’t give a fuck for ploughing the punk furrow anyway we’ve all got so many musical influences and likes and good music is good music, no matter what the genre! So, no Charlie Harper shit from me, just leave it unbroken, that’s it!
So any plans to continue on with the rest of the guys? I ask because the last I heard was a rumour you were working on a follow up to ‘Thru It’.
We have jammed up until a couple of months back just the three of us and the basic structures to some new songs are really good but Mo and Lewis have lost their jobs and it’s been difficult to all get the same time at Stompbox, if something does come of it? I’ll let you know.
The world needs the type music you make though fella. I got into No Choice relatively late into your career around the time of ‘Anaesthetize This’, but I immediately connected with songs like ‘Change’ and ‘Viva Internationalist’ and went out and played catch up with your back catalogue. So for fans who have been there since say the ‘Riot City’ days, do you feel like you kind of owe them something as a kind of final farewell?
Honestly I’ve never thought of us having fans, we barely fill gigs and struggle to get gigs and sell records so I don’t think there’s that many who’s going to miss out? [Long pause]
I did think of doing a final gig but when I said it to the boys, we all felt it was a bit odd really. The records are there and they’ve cost us loads of money over the years to just get them recorded, packaged and out there, we’ve done practically every benefit gig we could for as little as we could, so I think it’s fitting we don’t give them what seems like a desperate cringe worthy final gig to make them wonder if we actually thought we were important or something? To be honest, the end of No Choice is very positive for me and I think it should be for the boys, Ada and Terry included. We made three – in my opinion – very positive studio albums, all progressive and thoughtful and we cared for people and causes more than we ever cared for a career doing this.
Do you also feel that your decision to call it day with No Choice is kind of like you finally drawing a line under that part of your life and that you owe it to yourself to admit you (like all of us) are all getting older? I mean would a Decembrists fan still be looking to pen a song like ‘Book Cooking’? [Laughing]
In the early formative years from ‘Sadist Dream’/’Cream Of The Crop’ era, we weren’t a generic punk band then but very raw. So I guess the answer is, personally, I’ve grown up with the band and I’d rather the band didn’t get as tired and jaded as me. [Laughing] I’m aware here that this is just me and my thoughts and even though I have been the mouthpiece on stage and the lyricist off it, the band was just that and we all played a great part in it from the start, so credit to all. Martin Owen and me started it, then came Terry, Cid and Svend. That was 1981 – years down the line and with hindsight, it’s the right time and yes I’m 52 this month and I honestly always said 50 and out, it’s only because I can’t count you got the last album out of me. [Laughing]
As I understand it you also have quite a love of soul and reggae music?
Yes I am very partial to some reggae mate, ever since Llanedeyrn Youth Vlub 1978 when Jah Tubby’s Disco mixed the punk tunes along with the reggae tunes they introduced us kids too. It was rebel music in another form and opened my aural world up. Punk and reggae had an affinity in not just London back then and it’s wonderful just how music travels, from Hammersmith Palais to Llanedeyrn Youth Club, Cardiff. Tidy innit.
You’ve certainly always had a politically motivated lyrical content in your music. How important is that to you still in 2015.
I write obviously, so politics is something that effects everything we do daily and is important to me. I guess people like me in bands just write about what stimulates, angers, inspires and floors them…. I’m no different. With our song’s lyrics, I’m not ashamed to say I got the thesaurus out, it wasn’t to be pseudo-intellectual, I wanted to say it as I felt it and not being of a high intelligence, I educated myself doing so I believed I expressed them exactly as I felt. It has always been important that the lyrics can do the music justice.
To your credit you’ve never been afraid to openly declare your political colours to the post, you must have been over the moon when Vincent Tan got Cardiff City to play in red [Laughing]
[Laughing] Oh you had to get Vincent Tan in you naughty boy. The spirit and passion is gone at the moment down the City, I hope it comes back.
All joking aside what I admired about No Choice is you never took any bullshit, even when cyber warriors tried to give you a hard time and question your beliefs. Did you ever feel like simply giving up when shit like that was kicking off?
Oh the keyboard warriors [pauses] those shithouse anarchists who threatened my son, his girlfriend at the time and eventually, when in numbers, took a pop at him in town? Why, because he works for the Borders Agency. There’s more to it and people can tap in my name and No Choice and read it themselves if they want? It really changed my opinion of the anarchist network in mainly Cardiff and Bristol, the lies they told about me, my boy and the band were hilarious. When people put them right on their message boards they’d just delete them and add their own. When I’ve seen some of these cowards personally they have been embarrassing to the point of me feeling sorry for them. I don’t dwell on it, they made right arseholes of themselves and only succeeded in alienating themselves locally. Their pious self-righteousness caught up with ‘em and they are now seen for what they are. It’s funny to a point but I really felt for my boy, he had the dignity to take it on the chin though. Some of them trying to label my boy a racist could be damaging on a message board, people who know him just laughed at that but of course, those that don’t may believe it.
To answer the second part of this question I didn’t feel like giving up the band, I just wouldn’t do any gigs for anarchist groups any more. As I said, enough of those people apologised for that since but I don’t give a fuck for them now, I’m only answering this as it’s a relevant question, it was a talking point a couple of times and some anarchists were going to turn up to a gig in Brixton when we played But you guessed it, they didn’t. All the good they did, they undone but. C’est la vie!
So let’s end this interview on the up by celebrating the career of No Choice by asking a few out of the blue random questions:
Who did you want to be when you first joined No Choice?
Who did I want to be when we first started No Choice? Hmmmm. Malcolm Owen was as cool as fuck I thought. Though I always wanted to be a guitarist and frontman who would get away with having an old tennis racket for a guitar because I think I had those moves down to a tee in my bedroom mirror. [Laughing]
Your proudest No Choice moment was?
Proudest moments, the three studio albums contain everything that we were about and from the first to last we just strolled it, never compromising, just doing what we liked. I’m very proud of them. I remember when the ‘Sadist Dream’ single came out I felt proud and a bit embarrassed of the attention in Cardiff at the time. Me and Martin and Riot City Records wanted ‘Cream Of The crop’ as the A side but the others wanted ‘Sadist Dream’, they threw their dummy’s out and had their way, it didn’t matter I guess but ‘Cream Of The Crop has always been the track the older punks loved, a bit of a working class anthem maybe. Incidentally, the reason I didn’t like singing it in our sets was that I felt it portrayed the working class as better than the rest…. I never saw it like that. Joe Strummer wasn’t from a working class background. Am I better than him ? No! It doesn’t matter where you come from, it’s what you become that matters.
Also some gigs and sound checks when we did our songs and you could see people thinking “Jeez who are these, didn’t expect that?” In a complimentary way mind. That made it worth it. Doing benefit gigs and actually being asked to makes you proud too, you’re doing things as a band should. Reviews of gigs and albums we’ve done have sometimes brought tears to my eyes as it’s just so nice that people take the time to get engrossed in our stuff, amazing stuff. The Housemartins wore our T shirts on Top Of The Pops, or so I was told, I’ve never seen that one mind. What’s the overall proudest moment though? Getting to the end and finishing with the last album ‘Thru It’. It’s the end of a journey and when I think of it now, we personally, can be so proud of going out on that album. It catches us without inhibitions and with the best line up we ever had. I look back very proud. We all should.
The bands you played with who impressed you most were?
That’s a good one, the bands that impressed me [pauses] Against Me and Planes Mistaken For Stars obviously. Milloy and Solutions. My sons old band who were excellent and that’s not being over biased. Chumbawamba. Bad Sam. This System Kills. Moira And The Mice. The Housemartins. Fuel The Fire. I can go on and on if you want [Laughs]
The time you had to pinch yourself to make you remember you were just a punk band from Cardiff was?
The morning we got to Gainesville Florida and walked down the street and seeing such a beautiful place. Going to see Var and all those at No Idea Records and them making such a fuss of us and actually being so made up to meet us. That whole tour was utterly amazing. We had fans driving across States to see us play, Floyd from Fat Wreck getting a whole load of our merch for lots of the guys at Fat Wreck and Maximum Rock And Roll. Though the funniest moment was being in a bar in downtown Manhattan and when these local skinheads found out who I sang for they started singing ‘Cream Of The Crop’! When it nearly kicked off later and a knife came out, this guy says “hey it’s the guy from No Choice and those guys are his mate… Let’s cool this.” Strange but true. That was THE moment.
And finally if you were to pick any of your albums or songs to be the defining point to be remembered by what would it be?
I’m not sure about a particular track but I’d have to say ‘Dry River Fishing’, the album, was a defining point in our existence. It freed us from the shackles of ‘Sadist Dream’ and all the generic shit we were associated with and put us out there as a post punk, socio-political band that spoke in the 2000’s, 2002 to be exact. That album was years in the making and it all came together so well, sonically and aesthetically too. I spent a long time getting quotes and photos for that album and Monk Dave and Newest Industry did a fantastic job putting it together. That was the moment we all thought, “fuck….we’ve made an album.” The reviews were incredible too for that record and that’s why it stands out. It was the first time we knew we could do it.
‘Anaesthetize This!’ our 2nd album had Mowgli on board and adding to our sound which makes this one for me an album of ideas in action and I really like its gruffness and anger. It maybe doesn’t fit together as well as ‘Dry River Fishing’ but it was the stepping stone and something of a bag of ideas that worked really well and certainly paved the way for our final album ‘Thru It’. We had Lewis in the band for a long time before ‘Thru It’ and with Mowgli taking over all the guitars from Ada halfway through recording ‘Thru it’. For me, it’s my favourite album as it defines what we became, not only after ‘Sadist Dream’ but also after ‘Dry River Fishing’, an album some cynics thought we’d never top. Well we made a fuckin magnificent go of it on that album and to end on an album like that 32 years after first starting the band is for me, fantastic.
So to actually answer your question mate, for me, it’s hard to pin down a particular track that defines us. It would be nice to know what others might think though. [Laughing] Someone asked me recently my 12 favourite songs of ours. I didn’t have a clue. [Laughing even more].
Gagz I just want to thank you and the boys for making me a happy chappy at a shit load of No Choice shows this last 7 or 8 years. I wish you and the guys every success in the future. Make sure you keep us informed.
Thanks so much for that mate, it’s been an honour to play gigs for you and each and every person who has made the effort to turn up, say hello and buy our stuff. It really is humbling and we are all very grateful. After a gig in Cardiff once, around 2005, someone who I’m now friendly with, told me how he’d been through horrendous depression, told me how ‘Dry River Fishing’ helped him get through it. That made me so happy. And maybe that one thing was the most important thing we as a band ever did. If so, that’s brilliant and with that in mind, to answer your previous question I’d like us to be remembered by the track ‘These Nights’ off ‘Thru It’.
Peace, love and tolerance.
http://nochoice.bandcamp.com
http://www.nochoice.bigcartel.com/
https://m.facebook.com/nochoiceuk
Live photography courtesy of Ashlea Bea Photography https://www.facebook.com/AshleaBeaPhotography?fref=ts