Rob Wylde – Teenage Casket Company – Interview Exclusive

Written by David Prince
Friday, 19 November 2010 05:00

Vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Rob Wylde picked up his first guitar at the age of nine. He wrote his first song at the age of eleven and started playing in bands at the age of fourteen. His early bands included Father Time, Ex Girlfriend and Inside Out.

 

In 2000 he moved to Nottingham to join the melodic rock band China Doll. They released their debut CD ‘Better Late Than Never’ in 2001, toured with Danger Danger and were offered a two album record deal with TB Records. Unfortunately for Wylde, his fellow band mates got cold feet about packing in their day jobs to take a risk on the band. This resulted in the record label losing interest and China Doll split soon afterwards.

In late 2003 Wylde formed the pop rock band Teenage Casket Company. They released one album and one EP, ‘Dial It Up’ in 2005 (voted album of the year in the UK glossy magazine Powerplay) and ‘Eat Your Heart Out’ in 2006 which featured the single ‘Don’t Look At Me Like That’. Both albums received rave reviews all over the world which enabled them to tour the UK countless times, the USA twice, Italy and Ireland, headlining their own shows as well as supporting bands such as Vain, LA Guns, Mitch Malloy and Robin Black. After four solid years of touring and recording Teenage Casket Company decided to take a much needed break to pursue their own individual projects. This led to Wylde relocating to Boston, USA, to play several solo acoustic shows in late 2007 before forming the cock rock/glam band Sins Of America. Sins Of America hit the road in the USA in March 2008 headlining club shows as well as opening for platinum selling bands such as White Lion, Faster Pussycat and Britny Fox. They released their debut CD, ‘Own Best Enemy’, in November 2008 to exceptional reviews, especially in Japan and Australia. They spent the rest of 2008 and early 2009 playing all over the East Coast of America, before Wylde returned to the UK for another tour with Teenage Casket Company. During the tour growing tensions between Wylde and guitarist Jamie Delerict led to Delerict leaving the band in September, stripping the band down to a three-piece. This didn’t stop them hitting the studio in November to record a brand new single. ‘Best Friend Is My Radio’ was officially released on December 1st to exceptional reviews. In late 2009 Wylde also joined the touring band of former Tigertailz vocalist Steevi Jaimz as guitarist for a series of dates in Scandinavia. Now back in the UK, and after playing a one off show with Teenage Casket Company, Rob Wylde has taken the time to answer a couple of questions for you lovely people who read Über Röck…..

 

 

So thanks Rob for taking the time to talk to Über Röck. So how is life in the Wylde household? Is it becoming harder to return home – actually where do you consider home?

Hey man, no problem it’s my pleasure. Things in the Wylde household are great, bro. Got tons of things happening musically so that keeps me busy and out of trouble! I only really visit the UK once a year so I tend to stay a few months at a time when I do so I can spend time with my family and friends. I’ve been pretty much living in the States for over four years now so I really consider the USA as home, although it’s always nice to come back to the UK to visit. Apart from all the rain that is!

Let’s start at the beginning. You played drums with your first couple of bands, was it a case of doing a Dave Grohl and switching to guitar/vocals because you secretly yearned for the spotlight yourself? Inside Out even featured Tony Marshall (ex-Danny Vaughn guitarist) who has said some harsh words regarding you in the past. What are your thoughts on that period of your life?

Well, when I was a little kid I was always banging on pots and pans and wanted to be a drummer. I’d constantly hound my parents to buy me a drumkit but they were having none of it. Eventually when I was nine my dad convinced me I should play a “nice” instrument like the guitar (his words!), so I got a guitar for my ninth birthday and started taking lessons as I figured it was the next best thing to playing the drums. After taking lessons for a couple of years I wrote my first song which really picked up my interest and made me want to continue with the guitar, although I would still play drums on my friend’s drumkit after school which led me to join the school rock band as a drummer. From there I played in a couple of garage bands after leaving school before forming Inside Out as drummer in 1994 when I was seventeen. Although I was the drummer, I was also the songwriter and I guess in a way I just got frustrated with not getting any attention or recognition for my songwriting, ha ha!! I always secretly wanted to be a singer but back then I was really shy and didn’t really have the confidence to make the leap centre stage so I chose to hide behind my drums instead.

Inside Out was actually a pretty good band. In 1998 we showcased for a couple of labels who were really interested in signing us but told us we had to change our singer. So we fired the original guy and added Tony Marshall which was totally the wrong decision. We didn’t really get to know him that well before he joined the band and within six months of him joining, the band split. Tony liked to talk a lot of bullshit behind people’s backs. He’d say that the guitar player had said this and that about me when I wasn’t around, then he’d do the same to him and generally liked to stir things up. I think secretly, he just wanted to steal our guitar player for his own band and had no intention of making Inside Out work which was a shame as at that point we’d been together for five years and had worked hard, so I guess I held a grudge with him for a long time afterwards for breaking up our band. Looking back I think those years were a valueable learning experience for me which helped me grow a lot in confidence with my singing and songwriting and gave me the strength to ditch the drums, get centre stage, and move onto bigger and better things in the future.

Tell me about the tour with Danger Danger (during their Paul Laine power pop years) – was it great opening for your idols?

It was amazing! I couldn’t believe it when we landed that tour and, to top it all off, a couple of weeks prior to the tour China Doll signed a two album record deal with TB Records so we were on cloud nine. I remember soundchecking on the first night of the tour in Dudley and I saw Steve and Bruno walk in and check us out. I nearly wet my pants, ha ha!!! Then once we were done, Steve West got up onstage and apologised to us that we didn’t have more room onstage. We got to hang out with them a lot during the tour and at times I had to pinch myself to believe it was all really happening. It was a real dream come true for me! Since then and years later, through TCC, I’ve become really good friends with Bruno and Steve. They came out to see us when we played in New York back in 2006 and we hang out when I’m in New York and at Kiss conventions etc. They still remember me from China Doll which I thought was really cool. I remember Bruno telling me I’d come a long way since then.

After the split of China Doll you had that fateful jam with Jamie Delerict and Teenage Casket Company was born. Shortly after, Rob Lane and Spike were drafted in and the band took a life of its own. The band began touring and you even found time to record ‘Dial It Up’ which still to this day I play at least once a week… What was the feeling like in the band around this time? Also around 2004 we began trading t-shirts and the like – do you still have those shirts or have they been traded for others?

China Doll and Jamie’s old band Panic used to rehearse next door to each other at the same rehearsal rooms so that’s how we initially met. China Doll split and Panic were on their last legs so Jamie and I decided to get together and jam just for fun. We really didn’t think anything would come of it as we both listened to completely different styles of music but as soon as we plugged in and played together it was just magic. The chemistry was there straight away and no-one was more surprised than Jamie and I. To be honest, I’d never felt that lightning bolt chemistry before or since. I guess you could say the planets were aligned or something and we knew straight after out first rehearsal together that we had something very unique and special. We added Laney and Spike in January 2004 who were perfect then we just went into overdrive. By May we had an EP out, by June we were playing live and in October we recorded the ‘Dial It Up’ album and we were just on fire. We were an unstoppble freight train that crushed anything (and any band) that got in our way. Looking back, between 2004 and 2006 I honestly think we were the best unsigned band in the UK and no-one could touch us. Nottingham and the rock scene in general were just jumping back then and TCC were the band everyone was talking about.

I remember trading shirts with you and yes, I still have most of them although I did have to give my Nelson shirt away to Jamie. We had some kind of stupid bet going on one night, that if I won he’d have to wear a Nelson shirt onstage and if he won I’d have to wear a Danzig shirt onstage. Needless to say I won and Jamie had to rock the Nelson shirt, haha!!

My first live experience of TCC was at the Con Club in Porth back in 2005, which was an acoustic support to The Dangerfields and then the Big Rock Show in Pen-Coed Leisure Centre the Sunday after… both great shows and both totally different! Do you remember much of those times? It was also around this time that you started touring the US with The Erotics? You must have felt unstoppable?

Yeah we did. So much so that we embarked on a month long UK tour with The Dangerfields. And when I say a month, I mean a solid month playing every single freakin’ night all over the  country. It nearly killed Laney and Spike as they both held down day jobs as well as doing the tour. So they’d travel five hours to say London or wherever, drive five hours home. Get home at 5am, go straight out to work, do a full day’s work, then travel three hours or whatever to wherever we were playing the following night and this lasted night after night for a solid MONTH! I really don’t know how they did it to be honest but the belief and commitment to the band was so strong it really didn’t feel like much of a sacrifice to anyone. I think we were all just running on pure adrenaline. There were some interesting shows on that tour as I can remember. Wakefield springs to mind, as does Southampton (not for good reasons) and I vividly remember both of the shows you’re referring to. Great times, and I think that that tour solidified the fact that TCC would be around for a long time. We really bonded and became brothers when most bands would have lasted a week at best and would have packed up and gone home at the first sign of trouble or a slow night. We were in it for the long haul, and commited 100% no matter what. I guess we all realised we were onto a good thing.

We toured with The Erotics for the first time in May 2005. Laney was writing his own fanzine at the time called Trashpit and Mike Trash had sent in a CD for review. He then emailed Laney and said they were looking to come over to the UK to play some shows and wanted some info as to where to play and how to go about it. We were trying to put a tour together for around the same time ourselves, so it was Laney who suggested we should just tour together as a double package. Mike told Laney that if he could book a week’s worth of UK dates he could do the same for us in the USA that summer so that’s how the whole thing started. Since then we’ve toured with them three times in the UK and twice in the USA and every tour has been a pleasure as they’re just such great guys and everyone gets along so well.

Around the summer of 2006 you released the EP ‘Eat Your Heart Out’ which contains what I consider two of the best songs you have even written in ‘Cocaine’ and ‘Believe In You’ – From what I understand it was also around this time that the band were struggling to keep it together in that you had gotten so far but still needed that little push/help to get to the next level… Would you change anything from this time?

Thanks for the compliment. You have good taste as those songs are still two of my favourites to this day. At the time, we’d just gotten off a tour in early 2006 and went straight back into the studio to record ‘Eat Your Heart Out’ in March. We then jumped straight onto the Robin Black tour in April, followed by another tour with The Erotics in May . We then toured Ireland with The Dangerfields in June, returned home to shoot the ‘Don’t Look At Me Like That’ video later that month before releasing ‘Eat Your Heart Out’ and heading off to the States for the Metal Sludge tour in July so our schedule was insane. It was only after we’d returned home from the States and later in the year that we really started to burn out and fall apart somewhat as we were all just fuckin’ exhausted. That didn’t stop us playing the Summerslam festival in Italy in September or running ourselves into the ground playing all over the UK for the latter part of 2006. Bearing in mind we didn’t have the help of a label, management or roadcrew etc at any point in 2006, neither did we have any help whatsoever financially so we were all just burnt out doing everything on our own. I think we also felt really frustrated and pissed off we hadn’t gotten the break we felt we deserved after working so damn hard, which definately led to me and Jamie drinking way too much and I think the shows in late 2006 suffered as a result. I really don’t know what we could have done to change things as we were doing everything we possibly could. Maybe we could have skipped playing some of the shittier venues we played and concentrated more on London and the bigger cities but I have no regrets.

During the last tour, before the initial time off back in November 2007 with the Erotics on the Brawl For It All 2 Tour, at the show in Tom’s Bar, Pontypridd I could see the tensions between you and Jamie which I always saw as the fire behind the band that kept you strong. Was it this tour that led to you moving to the States and putting the band on hold?

No, the truth is in early 2007 Jamie sat us all down and told us he needed to take three months off from TCC to get sober. He was a mess and needed to get himself together. I didn’t want us to lose our momentum and disappear for three months which, with hindsight was a bit selfish of me but he insisted. So I decided since we weren’t going to be doing anything for three months and TCC was my entire life that I’d spend a few months out in the States rather than sitting on my ass alone in Nottingham. Then a week or so later I read that Jamie would be playing three months of tour dates with The Dangerfields….so much for getting sober! Obviously I was pissed, but to this day he still insists it was all just a big coincidence and that the dates came up “after” he’d sat us down to say he couldn’t tour for three months in order to get sober, and that was the start of me and Jamie’s breakdown. I was the last one in the band who wanted to put TCC on hold but I had no option but to go along with the other guys.

What was your take on Jamie deciding to join The Dangerfields during your tour with Sign?

I just thought the whole thing was just so unprofessional. I was hurt and angry, but more than anything I was disappointed in Jamie as a person, as TCC has always been a super professional band in terms of attitude. We’ve never let our fans down and no matter what’s been going on in our personal lives we’ve always left all of our baggage at the door when we hit the stage and have given 100% no matter what. The fact that the tour had been booked for over seven months and that I’d returned from the States specifically to do it just added insult to injury. It very nearly came to blows in the dressing room between me and Jamie when he dropped the bombshell on us on the first night of the tour in Leeds. We went on to play four shows without him, then he returned to play the remainder of the tour but the damage had already been done and we didn’t say a word to each other for the rest of the tour. In fact that whole tour was just a really horrible fuckin’ expierence and one of the few tours that I don’t look back kindly upon. On top of all of that, the TCC/Sign mix really didn’t work at all and I couldn’t wait for the tour to end and get my ass back to America!

Now you may not like this but Sins Of America, to me, sounded too much like Teenage Casket Company which considering that you are the main force in both bands is inescapable – was there any desire to separate the songs? Were they leftover TCC songs? Admittedly, they were less punky but still sounded like the more commercial TCC songs. Having said that, I really think that the SOA CD is a release that shows you becoming a true artist in your own right.

Once again, thanks man! Yeah, I hear where you’re coming from, but at the end of the day if I’m singing, playing guitar and writing the songs then it’s always going to sound like me in some form or other whether I want it to or not. In fairness, two of the songs – ‘Own Best Enemy’ and ‘Girl Like You’ – were initially written for TCC, but the rest were written from scratch when I moved to the States and put the band together. I didn’t want to do anything radically different to TCC but I definately wanted to infuse a lot more of my glam/cock rock roots into the mix both musically and especially visually. I found the right guys who looked the way I wanted them to look and were right to play that kind of music. Like you said, a lot of the more poppy songs could’ve easily become TCC songs and probably would’ve at some point but there are certain songs that TCC could never have done like ‘Don’t Bite The Hand That Feeds You’ or ‘Finish What Ya Started’ for example, complete with the whole 80’s style guitar hero guitar solo which you’d never find in TCC, so I think there are a few distinct differences between the two bands although there is a common thread there as well.

I take it that you have read the interview I did with your former partner in crime Jamie Delerict… What do you say to his comments that “He has no desire to listen to it (Teenage Casket Company’s latest single ‘Best Friend Is My Radio’) – It’s simply not Teenage Casket Company to me”?

Yeah, I did and I think it’s hilarious. He doesn’t want to listen to it as I think he knows deep down it’ll be really fuckin’ good. The thing is me and Jamie put the band together and had a lot of awesome times together, not just as band mates but as friends as well… Times I will look back on when I’m an old man and laugh about and cherish forever, but in reality he was one quarter of the band, and I think he would be the “first” to admit that he never brought a hell of a lot to the table musically. He brought an attitude and a cartoon style character to the band (almost like Gene Simmons), which I’m not knocking for a second because it worked and worked really well for a long time, but three quarters of the original band still remain including the singer/songwriter and we sound better than ever so how that isn’t TCC I’ll never know!

We personally think ‘Best Friend Is My Radio’ is the best thing we’ve ever recorded, both musically and production-wise and everyone who hears it seems to agree, even long time TCC fans from back in the day.

So what is your current status with Steevi Jaimz and how did that come about?

I’ve known Steevi on and off for years. In fact I remember talking to him way back in 2002 about joining a new Tigertailz line up that he was putting together for a UK tour with Robin Black. He was looking for a couple of members and I guess someome passed my number on to him thinking I’d be a good man for the job. We spoke on the phone a bunch of times but nothing really came of it. Then in 2006 I heard a couple of new songs (‘Something Good, Something Bad’ and ‘Kiss Of Death’) that he’d uploaded onto his Myspace page which would eventually appear on his ‘My Private Hell’ album and I was blown away. So I emailed him and told him if he needed a guitar player to get in touch. Fast forward to 2009 and he emailed me in America asking if I’d me interested in playing a couple of Scandanavian shows with him that he had booked for late 2009, so I jumped at the chance. The shows were killer, especially Sweden where we stayed in a 4 star hotel and had a limo drive us to and from the venue. Real rockstar treatment for once!!! As of right now Steevi and I have been asked to write a couple of songs for a band based out in Greece, followed by working on ideas for his next solo album which is the works with hopefully some more live dates in Europe next year.

I understand that TCC have signed a US deal with JAMSYNC MUSIC who are to release ‘Best Kept Secret’ (a compilation of the band’s earlier recordings, completely retooled and remastered all in one project with a foreword written by Hardrock Haven freelance writer Derric Miller). Wasn’t there a chance of an East Coast tour to coincide with a late fall release? Any news on this?

Yeah that album should be out within the next couple of months. As well as being totally remixed and remastered, there’s a Bruno Ravel (Danger Danger) remix of ‘Best Friend Is My Radio’ on there too so it should be really cool and may re-open some more doors for us in the US.

We were talking about an American tour and had a couple of tentative dates in place, but as always it all comes down to money. Obviously with me living in the States it would be 10 times easier to organise a tour but we can’t afford to lose money anymore like we used to do. We need to at least break even and when you consider the flights alone, you’re talking £500 each, so you’re already £1,500 in debt before you even step off the plane and play a single note so it’s tough, but hopefully we can maybe figure something out next year. I know a lot of people want to see us, so we’ll see what we can do.

So what is the next step for Rob Wylde as a recording artist?

I’m going to be working on a few ideas with Steevi Jaimz both for the Greek band I was telling you about as well as for his next solo album, as well as new TCC material for a possible new album next year if it all works out. I’m also going to be recording my first solo album out in the States next year. The songs are all written, ready to go and I can’t wait to get cracking on that and the Sins Of America CD should finally see the light of day at some point in 2011 (I hope!) It’s been finished forever but as yet is still unreleased so it’d be good to get that out there for people to hear. I just want to keep as busy as possible, play as many shows, write as many songs and release as much shit as I can before I get too old!!!

To end on a light note, the Über Kökk Röck ‘n’ Röll test!!!!

Ted Poley or Paul Laine?

Ted Poley all the way baby. He’s one of my favourite singers of all time and sounds better than ever on ‘Revolve’.
Trixter or Nelson?

I’m kinda all Trixtered out at the minute. I’ve seen them way too many times in a short period of time but I’d still go with Trixter. I gotta say Nelson really are lame!

CC Deville or Richie Kotzen?

CC Deville of course. A true rock star in every sense of the word and someone I had the pleasure of meeting last year backstage at a Poison show…I was in total awe, I couldn’t speak!!!

Richie Sambora or Jon Bon Jovi?

That’s a tough one as Jon Bon Jovi was probably the reason I started singing as a kid and I still love the first four albums where he sings great, but Richie did have a much better voice and was the soul of the band so it’s going to have to be a tie.

Dave Bickler or Jimi Jamison?

Jimi Jamison. ‘Vital Signs’ is one of my favourite albums.

Crazy Lixx or Reckless Love?

That’s another tough one as I love both those bands. As of right now it’s gonna have to be Reckless Love.

All that’s left to say is thank you Rob for taking the time to answer these questions…

No problem bro, anytime. Please feel free to visit www.myspace.com/robwylde, www.myspace.com/teenagecasketcompany, www.myspace.com/sinsofamerica, www.myspace.com/steevijaimz and buy my music so I can keep making more!