If
someone had told me when I was eight that I’d be calling Tony Mortimer’s
mobile number in twenty years time, firstly I would have asked them what a mobile phone was, then I would have passed out… “You was eight, was you? Tat makes me feel SO old!!” replies the delightful Tony Mortimer in his unshifting Walthamstow lilt when I put this to him. East 17, pedallers of ‘House of Love’, ‘Stay’, ‘It’s Alright’ and the immortalised Christmas no. 1 ‘Stay’, were childhood idols of mine – and no doubt, yours. Honest about their path to reformation after a Snakes ‘n’ Ladders-like journey to this point, Tony reaffirms his idolatry status to me by being a bloody nice guy…
So Tony, what’s the plan at the moment, is this a rehearsal period for you boys? We are rehearsing now; they’re actually all waiting downstairs for me because we’ve been doing rehearsals this morning.
And this time around, the music business is so unpredictable, so was it just instinct told you to get back together this time around and make a go of it? No, well we tried it didn’t we a couple of times and we kept messing it up, so we kind of gave up on it, then Terry rang me a couple of years ago and said ‘do you fancy just going in to the studio to see what we come up with?’, ‘cause we’re mates originally, so I said, ‘yeah, cool, is Brian involved?’ and he said, ‘no he wants to do his solo thing’ – I think he’s editing movies, or wants to get into editing, so I was like, ‘alright, cool’. We tried it last time and we were like right, we need to do an album, we need to do a tour and put too much pressure on it. Tis time we just sort of had a laugh to see what would happen, and we’d kind of given up hope of anything happening, then we got offered a record deal. Tis record company’s fantastic as well; they’re like an old school company that do it the old fashioned way, the proper way, so it’s all been a bit amazing
really. It’s been – as you say – an unpredictable thing. I’d love to say it was all part of my master plan, but I’ve got to be honest, it wasn’t.
Sometimes when you take something off the boil, you give it the space to do what it needs to do… Yeah, and do you know what, I really believe in that now because that’s what happened. We were working with this producer guy who was young and really hip, him and his partner, and that’s Blair who’s ended up being in the band now because we let that friendship develop as well. We didn’t audition anyone, we just sort of asked him and said we’ll see what happens.
It’s been a very natural progression to add Blair in then; it hasn’t been engineered, so you must feel quite good about that? Yeah, quite the opposite – we wanted a girl. Yeah, so that’s what we was thinking about. Tinking about that now, that’s just weird, but we thought a girl singer would be fantastic… it’d certainly cheer us up on stage!
Yeah, it’d give you something to look at and balance the smell of a tour bus with you smelly boys in it… She would not want to be with men, she’d have to have her own one. I live at home with me missus and two
girls, so I live in a very feminine environment that they rule, so when I go out with the boys it’s lovely! Sometimes you need that, just to go out with the ladsand talk absolute nonsense and do things lads do, so I’m looking forward to the tour. Nowadays we know when each other needs space, which is really important; that’d be advice for any band, ‘cause sometimes you just need to walk off and get ten minutes on your own. You spend so much time in a close environment, I mean we’re gonna tour the UK first, so we’ll be on a tour bus together and things can get right up your nose after a while. You know, if someone picks their toes at the start of the tour, it’s funny, but by the end of the tour, you wanna kill ‘em!
You mentioned your lovely lady and your girls – how do you prepare for that mentally? Do you just think, it’s not forever, and it’s a really positive thing? Yeah, I think exactly that: it’s not forever, and it’s a really positive thing and it’s good. It helps me be less grumpy at home and it helps the relationship as well; it kinda refreshes it when you go back, you know, which is always nice! Ten that lasts about 10 minutes…!
Emma Garwood East 17 come to the Waterfront on September 11th. For tickets, go to
www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk. Tis is just a snippet of our awesome chat with Tony, so check the rest online at
Outlineonline.co.uk
18 /September 2011/
outlineonline.co.uk
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