Stunning On Empty

IN MUCH the same way as revolutionary Ivy Tilsleys and Phyllis Pearses used to gather round the foot of Madame Guillotine, you’ll never find a pack of drooling journalists too far from the scene of a band splitting.
After a few years in the trade, you get to realise that “musical differences” normally translates as “the drummer’s just tried to decapitate the bass player with a cymbal” and when members “want to pursue new directions”, they’re probably shagging each other’s girl/boy/animal friend.
“Nah, I’m afraid this is an entirely amicable divorce,” laughs Steve Wall who in the past fortnight has become the ex-lead singer of The Stunning. “There’s a bit of a custody battle raging at the moment as to who gets the Fender-Rhodes keyboard but, you know, this really was a case of everyone sitting down, cooly and calmly, and agreeing that we’d come to the end of the ride.”
I remember 18 months ago having my hand squeezed by Glenn Frey and told, “Stuart, believe me, there are no circumstances in which The Eagles will ever reform.” Robert Plant was similarly negative about being in the same room again as Jimmy Page and I’m sure Lou Reed uttered the words “hell”, “freezes” and “over” when the possibility of the Velvet Underground giving it another whirl was raised for the nine hundred and forty-ninth occasion.
“Never’s an awfully long time,” Wall reflects, “but I don’t think we’re going to get into the reunion business. The Stunning was an extremely happy chapter in all of our lives but we’ve made a decision and I’d rather just leave it there. With the possible exception of Aslan, most bands that get back together do so for purely financial reasons and there’s never the same creative spark. I went and saw The Buzzcocks recently – who I adored in their heyday – and didn’t really enjoy it. Something was missing.”
While The Stunning bid their national ‘farewell’ at Féile, it was in the rather more intimate confines of Galway’s Warwick Hotel that they played their final gig – twice!
“Yeah, there was a definite touch of the Frank Sinatras about that! We’d wanted to finish where it had all started and rather than disappointing a lot of people who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to get in, we slotted in a second night.
“It was interesting because as well as the hardcore Stunning fans, there were a lot of non gig-goers who’d caught us on the radio and were curious to see us before we were gone. A photographer I know was telling me about these Australian friends of his who’d come along, been blown away and couldn’t understand why we were breaking-up. Hearing that from first-timers makes you think, ‘okay, we’re calling it a day but we weren’t bad, were we?’”
I doubt if our colonial cousins are alone in wondering why one of the most successful Irish bands of the past decade have hang up their plectrums. Kicking off with the 1987 cow-punk classic ‘Got To Get Away’, The Stunning were rarely out of Uncle Larry’s Top 30 and in ‘Half-Past Two’ and ‘Heads Are Gonna Roll’ boast two songs that will forever be etched on the national psyche.
“The three albums so far have sold 60,000 copies in Ireland,” Steve enthuses, “which is pretty good. A lot of the credit for that is down to Solid. I’ve got letters of refusal from Mother and various other record companies but they were the ones who were prepared to take a risk with ‘Got To Get Away’ and have stood by us ever since. Their job was to sell records for us at home which they did not just well but brilliantly. The reason we broke-up was, that, ultimately, we weren’t able to achieve that same level of success overseas.”
Aha, do I detect the delicate stench of a juicy story developing.
“Not really,” he chuckles. “Looking back now, I realise that in the early days our horizons were far too narrow. We should have gone to America in 1990 rather than 1993. Some people might say, ‘oh, you weren’t ready for that then’, but I think if a band’s challenged early on in its career, it encourages you to be more competitive, to work on your sound harder and to make sure you succeed. Things are a little more laid-back in Galway and the world can tend to pass you by.
“Another problem is that we were constantly having to play gigs to keep ourselves afloat financially. Except for the second album, we paid for all our own recordings. We had to tour our asses off to get the money together for Paradise At The Picture House and we still owe £4,000 to a travel-office here for flights to America. We never had an advance from a record company which allowed us to maybe stay at home or go into a studio and develop ideas.”
However much those trans-Atlantic forays dented their finances, they demonstrated to Steve and his brother Joe – who now plan to work together as a duo – that there’s a brave new musical world out there waiting to be conquered.
“We learnt an awful lot in the States,” Wall reveals. “When you’re doing a gig there, the audience expects too see rock ‘n’ roll and that forces you to give them more of a show. We played to mainly Irish-American audiences in Boston but there were other dates in out-of-the-way places like Saratoga Springs and Portland, Maine where there were only a couple of Irish and we still got a brilliant reception. Actually, we pulled over 800 in Maine which was down to the promoter, who owns a restaurant there, putting it around that we’d had number one albums in the U.K. He wasn’t being political – most Americans think that Ireland is in the U.K. – so we didn’t argue.”
Branded “a rockier Crowded House” and, cough, “an Irish Beatles” by various descriptively-challenged journalists, the band garnered an enormous amount of press from what was relatively few gigs and got invited to play a prestige charity show at New York’s Beacon Theatre.
“There were some weird people on the bill like Janis Ian and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Anyway, we were rehearsing a short set backstage with a couple of acoustic guitars and one of the lads banging away on a cardboard box, and decided we’d do The Byrds’ ‘So You Want To Be A Rock ‘N’ Roll Star’. As soon as we finished, we started roaring laughing because the harmonies were all over the place and we knew we’d made a balls of it.
“Seconds later, there was a knock on the door and you’ll never guess who walked in – Roger McGuinn! It turns out that he’d been in the dressing-room next to us, meditating in complete darkness and our version of his song had woken him up.
“We were a bit embarrassed at first,” Steve confesses, “but we gave him a C.D. with the cover of ‘...Star’ on it and ever since then he’s kept in touch. He wanted to produce an album for The Stunning and even though the band’s split, the offer’s still there and it’s basically a question of us hooking up with him.”
Rather than sprinting down to the Labour for butter vouchers, Wall’s former comrades-in-a-Transit are already arranging alternative employment. Joe – as we know – is going to be playing with big brother, Jimmy’s contributing percussion and drums to Paul Brady’s new album and Cormac is involved in a couple of dance-related projects. Derek’s the only one who’s yet to map out his future career path but few expect him to be cooling his six-string for too long.
“All of a sudden, it’s dawning on us that this thing which has kept us motivated for the past seven years has ceased to exist and we have to work out how we’re going to spend the rest of our lives. That’s frightening and, by the same token, exciting because I haven’t a clue what I’ll be doing this time next year.”
One possible scenario is that Steve will be indulging in a spot of the Sir John Gielguds.
“Robert Quinn, the guy who directed the video for ‘Heads Are Gonna Roll’, has just made his short film debut and I play the main character in it. That was my first time doing something like that, as well, and I must say I really enjoyed the experience. It’s set in the ‘50s and is about a guy who rides round Ireland on a motorcycle putting up advance posters for a circus. A child gets killed in one of the places he goes through and, as the stranger in town, he gets the blame.
“Actually,” he jokes, “it’s caused a bit of sibling rivalry. Joe’s also spent the past six or seven months working on a short. They were both entered into the Galway Film Festival and I’m afraid mine won! What’s important, though, is that it’s opened up both of our minds to the opportunities which exist out there.”
A final word, perhaps, for all The Stunning fans who are still sobbing uncontrollably into their hankies?
“It was fun. Thank you.”
And goodnight.