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New-look band are back on the stage


THE Lambrettas came into be- ing in the late 1970s. The original members were Doug Sanders, Paul Wincer, Mark Ellis and Jez Bird. Their first gig was on Hastings Pier, and promoter Peter Haines offered them management. After a few months of gigs they were signed to Elton John’s Rocket Records and released first single Go Steady. Newport Riverfront will play


host to the latest line-up of the band with Doug Sanders and Paul Wincer joined by Phil Edwards and Ant Wellman. Fans can expect The Lambrettas’ biggest hit as well as tracks from their classic album Beat Boys In The Jet Age. Andy Howells recently chatted with Doug Sanders about The Lambrettas.


Are you looking forward to playing Newport and have you visited the city before? I look forward to playing every


gig. We’ve played Cardiff a couple of times but the other Welsh visits we’ve made have been up north.


So Newport’s new ground for The Lambrettas? It’s new ground for The Lambret-


tas but not for our guitarist, Phil Ed- wards. His family comes from there and so does he. He doesn’t sound Welsh but he’s Welsh at heart.


Interview


When did you decide you want- ed to be in a band? Since when I was at school re-


ally, I used to go and watch the lo- cal bands at the YMCA or wherever it was. I’m sure they were awful but I thought they were absolutely bril- liant and then you get to the point when you’re playing in the YMCA and you want to get into some clubs and then it goes “I want to be on Top of the Pops”. If you’re lucky you get some of the way there.


How did The Lambrettas come together? It didn’t take too long. I was play-


ing in another band called Shake- down. We were just playing in pubs and stuff. We were playing a few covers and writing a few of our own songs there was another guy in it called Jez Bird and I thought “I want to do something different”. I got Jez to come along with me because we wanted to do our own stuff, and started The Lambrettas.


Did you get signed quickly? We did get signed quite quickly.


We did a few gigs in Brighton and then in London where the clubs were full when we were playing.


SHOW: The latest line up of The Lambrettas take to the stage at The Riverfront tonight


Every record company wanted to sign their own little Mod band and we went with Rocket. We did a sin- gle called Go Steady, which got to 80 or 90 in the chart by which time we thought we were The Beatles. One of the people who was be- hind our version of Poison Ivy was Pete Waterman because he used to work in the A&R dept of Rocket Records, that was one of his first music biz jobs. In actual fact the first silver disc that Pete got out of the billions he has was us. Poison Ivy had been covered quite a lot before in the same vein, very close to the original and we didn’t see


Music history uncovered


INSTRUMENTAL in bringing The Lambrettas showto Newport is promoter, DJ and author Jon- ny Perkins. Jonny is probably best remembered for giving


The Police their first gig in Newport back in the 1970s as well as working alongside such acts as The Jam, The Stranglers and The Sweet in their formative years. Many of Jonny’s music memories, from self- produced fanzines, flyers and memorabilia have been gathered together in his book In It For The Crack, while being a personal memoir is also a document of Newport’s music history. In many cases Jonny lets his collected ephemera do the talking, creating a scrap book of social commen- tary for the 1970s and 80s. A great starting point if you want to start un-


covering some of Newport’s musical history which sadly seems to be hard to find. In it For The Crack is priced at £12.99 and availa-


ble from all good book stockists as well as Jonny’s website init4thecrack.webs.com.


Andy Howells


the point of doing it that way so we worked it as a Ska thing. It was in-keeping with the time and quite dancey and it got played to death on the radio, so it did quite well.


I remember seeing you guys on Top of The Pops in the 1980s, what’s it like watching your- selves when the shows rerun? I try not to do it (laughs). I find


it cringe-worthy quite frankly but most other people I know find it quite good. It’s good to have done it and in some ways I’m quite proud of it but I find it tricky to watch. I’m never comfortable watching or looking at photos of myself.


What material will you be doing at your Newport Riverfront show? It’s 35 years since we’ve done


The Beat Boys in the Jet Age al- bum so we’ve done a few gigs where we’ve done that album in its entirety and one or two other bits. At the moment, I guess were do- ing tracks from that album and a couple of homage type things. We should really be doing some new stuff but we don’t want to do it until it’s released. We had ages getting the back


catalogue released because we had legal wrangles but that’s finally released but we wanted that out before we did anything new. We’re due in the studio on the July 1. I think that’s going to be a four or five-track EP and the minute we’ve recorded it we’ll start doing those songs as well. I write songs that’s what I do; my plan is for the Lam- brettas but its bang up to date.


The Lambrettas play Newport


Riverfront tonight at 7.30pm. For ticket details visit tickets.new- portlive.co.uk.


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3 Music Ahead of The Lambrettas gig atNewport Riverfront tonightANDYHOWELLS chats toDoug Sanders


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