Wall of Sound

O.K., SO here's where it's at. The Stunning are back in the charts with "Deja Voodoo" - a covers E.P. for chrissakes! - and I'm sitting here in Steve Wall's country home (erm, only home actually. They're not that big yet.) to do yet another interview and asks loads of really interesting questions like "so why did you decide to do a covers E.P?" and "did you borrow the skullcap you're wearing on the front of it from The Edge?"

Right? Wrong. I'm sitting here, preparing to boldly go where no other music journalist has ever gone before. This is not an interview. This is something much more personal. Much more revealing. Much more intimate. I'm about to - wait for it - I'm about to GO THROUGH HIS RECORD COLLECTION!!!

What do you mean, so what? Don't you get it? Record collections are as personal as diaries. The music you listen to is a reflection of the type of person you are. Or the type of person you want to be.

Consider the following scenario: You've just met the most amazing looking girl you've ever seen in a nightclub and, wonder of wonders, she's agreed to come back to your place for a cup of coffee and a smoke. The kettle's on, the lights are low and you need some mood music. So what are you gonna pull out of that great untidy stack of old vinyls in the corner? Goats Don't Shave or the soundtrack from Diva? Charlie Parker or Bryan Adams? Cause if you stick on your favourite album and "I am a boring, tasteless wanker" starts coming out of the speakers and she gets up and leaves, then it's not that you've blown it or anything. It's just that you're a boring tasteless wanker with a record collection to prove it. See?

Ahem, right where are we? Oh yes, Steve Wall's living room. His records are stacked in four neat piles against the wall. They're not in any particular order, like all the best collections. Steve's perched on a chair beside me, smiling. He has no fear. He knew I was coming you see. Those old Engelbert Humperdinck albums will be safe under the bed. Still, you never know what you'll find.

Let the flicking commence . . .

So what have we? Hmm. Link Ray, John Lennon's Mind Games, Marc Almond, Something Happens!, a few old BBC sound effects albums, The Goons, That Petrol Emotion . . . Wait a minute. The Goons? Sound effects? Steve?

"Ah, I picked them up years ago in secondhand shops," he explains sheepishly. "Sometimes, back in the old days we'd record these really mad intros to play before we went on stage. We used to do them on an old four track cassette machine - music mixed with effects like animal stampedes and stuff. Some of the effects are a gas actually (picks up album cover and reads off the back): 'Gobbling Goose', 'Man Puking' and stuff like that. This one here ('Irish Nightingale') is a bit of an insult really, though, because basically what it is, is some eejit of a man badly impersonating a nightingale. And they call it an Irish Nightingale! Here's another great one: 'Stomach Punch Followed by Sharp Groan'." (laughs).

I groan. Sharply. Cred around the ankles there Steve.

The next album is nearly as bad, Barry White's The Man Is Back. Why? I mean . . . Barry White? "Ha, ha. I was looking for this song that I heard on the radio one night. I liked it because the lyrics were so over the top. Sort of (does a reasonably good Barry White impersonation) 'Baby I wanna ease your little panties off' - completely over the top and absolutely hilarious. So I saw that album going cheap and bought it but it was crap and unfortunately that track wasn't on it."

Hey, I believe you. Now tell me why you've stickered your name to most of your album covers.

"Yeah, well there used to be about four of us living in the same house and we all had our own record collections and some of us had the same records, so to avoid confusion we invented this sticker system. I had a green one, someone else would use red ones and so on. It was the only way to do it cause people used to come and go and borrow records and stuff like that. So the stickers are still there."

What's the first record that you ever bought? He reaches into one of the piles and hands me an old single. "Mott The Hoople's 'Honoluchie Boogie' - I still have it (obviously). I bought that in 1973 in Woolworths in Dublin."

What next? Elvis, Brook Benton, Elvis, Brook Benton, Brook Benton, Elvis, Brook Benton, Elvis, Elvis . . . Steve, you've got a lot of Brook Benton and Elvis albums.

"Yeah, ha. Brook Benton and Elvis Presley are my two favourite male vocalists of all time. It's a terrible cover (picks up Benton album) but on this one he does a brilliant version of 'Moon River'. Here it is (points at the sleeve and reads) 'From The Paramount Picture Breakfast At Tiffanys'. He also does the best ever version of that song, 'Rainy Night In Georgia'. Actually, it's funny because he was a truck driver, Dean Martin was a truck driver and Elvis Presley was a truck driver. So I reckon it's something to do with singing over the sound of the engine that gave them all their deep resonant voices."

So where does Barry White fit into this theory then?

"He must have been a helicopter pilot." (laughs).

I never really saw you as a big Elvis fan . . .

"Alan, the Something Happens! bass player is worse (laughs). Whenever we get together, the two of us just talk Elvis the whole time. Elvis movies, Elvis songs, Elvis this, that and the other. Actually, we refer to him as The King all the time - people think we're talking about the recently deceased King of Belgium or something. Anyway, Alan has this mad Elvis toilet seat. It's covered in putty or some kind of ceramic thing and it's all inlayed with jewels and pictures of Elvis and things. It's gorgeous."

I'll take your word for it. Erm, let's move on shall we . . .

The Skids, Bauhaus, The Waterboys, James Brown, Moss Side Story, The Blue Angels, The Rumble Fish soundtrack, Miles Davis, Andy Warhol. What do you think of the Velvet Underground by the way?

"They're great but that particular copy of Andy Warhol is really badly scratched. I actually saw them playing in Glastonbury this year. I really enjoyed them but I was really surprised at Lou Reed."

Why so?

"Well he was really finnicky and making this big deal over his monitors. Now I know what it's like when your monitors are acting up but he held the whole show up for about fifteen minutes and he even got the soundman out on stage and it just got . . . like there were thousands of people there watching and he wound up getting them all involved with his petty problems with monitors. I mean, 90% of the crowd probably didn't even know what monitors were! And then he had the crew out adjusting his mikestand and stuff. Basically he just came across as a right finnicky old bastard."

Yeah, speaking of finnicky old bastards . . . (I'm holding up a Van Morrison album).

"I like Van Morrison but I'm getting a bit tired of his new stuff. Musically it's getting a little predictable. You kinda know exactly when he's gonna change chords and notes. The older stuff was more spontaneous or something."

Burt Bacharach, an album of old Elvis interviews, Bruce Hornsby (Bruce Hornsby!), Jimmy Smith, Lou Rose, Bowie's Low, some old Stunning white labels ("hopefully they'll be worth money sometime"), Stevie Ray Vaughan, Dada, Bob Dylan. You've got a Dylan cover on the new E.P. don't you?

"Yeah - 'Subterranean Homesick Blues'. We actually supported him last year for two nights in the Hammersmith Odeon. To be honest I didn't think much of him. He just seemed to be completely off in a world of his own and had a total disregard for the audience. But I suppose real diehard Dylan fans are kind of masochistic in that way. It doesn't bother them that he doesn't seem to be bothered with them. But then again, I suppose I'd be the same if I saw Elvis. Still for the London gigs, Dylan actually had his back to the audience most of the time."

Ah, here's something I meant to ask you (I've just found a copy of Once Around The World). In the cover shot, why's Derek sitting in the car where you can hardly see him? "Because it was cold and he didn't want to get out. Derek's never been too fussed about being in band photographs."

We're in the third pile now - it's mostly Led Zeppelin but there are a few items of interest. Betty Boo? "Yeah, some great pop songs and she's really good looking."

Captain Beefheart? "There's a Beefheart song on Deja Voodoo ('The Zig Zag Wanderer') but it's off Safe As Milk which Cormac has at the moment." Billie Holiday? "There was a song on an old NME compilation tape called No Detour Ahead so basically I bought the album for that."

Johnny Cash? "Girl From The North Country - it's superb. Actually, Johnny Cash has just signed to Rick Rubins new label which used to be called Def Jam but is now called Def America and I got a call from them about a month ago. They were looking for songs for his new album and they heard 'Got To Get Away' (The Stunning's first single, as if you didn't know) and so they were asking me did I have any more country style songs that would suit him. I had loads so I sent away about seven songs."

Have you heard back from them?

"Didn't hear a word (laughs). I'm not really expecting to. I usually just try to forget about these things. It's like doing the Lotto. You just do it and forget about it. If you win then you'll know soon enough."

Speaking of Johnny Cash, do you have Zooropa?

"No but I've heard it. I do have The Joshua Tree though. There's a song on that I really like - 'In God's Country'. I have great memories of that song actually. I remember when we were recording Once Around The World in France, I was driving back to Normandy from Paris really late one night. Most of the band had already gone home but I had to stay to mix the album and I was getting kinda homesick, wanted to go out and have the crack in Dublin or Galway.

"Anyway, I was in a really weird mood and I was belting through the French countryside at dawn, doing about a hundred miles an hour down these windy roads. It was fucking great. I can remember thinking to myself that it would be so easy for the car to spin off the road and if I didn't slow down then I was going to die. Strangely, though, I didn't really care. I was just in this mad self-destructive mood . . . (pauses). Do you know that I was born on the same day as James Dean?"

Relax - he was twenty-three when he died. And what's all this got to do with U2?

"Well I was listening to 'In God's Country' at the time" (laughs).

We were running out of time then and I'm running out of space now, so here's a brief run through stack four. Dread Zeppelin (reggae version of the Led originals), The La's ("They're good but they'd really want to get thinking about bringing a new album out"), Lenny Kravitz, Al Green, Tom Waits, Sly and the Family Stone, loads of crap ("Christmas presents from Joe. He buys loads of albums and then gives the ones he doesn't want to people as presents - the miserable git"), B52's ("we supported them around England just after the Dylan gigs"), Bringing It All Back Home, Bela Bartok ("that's for when I'm in a really serious mood and reading Kafka"), World Party, Ice T, Stereo MC's, Arrested Development . . .

One last question, Steve. Is vinyl dead?

"Sadly yeah. I got a CD player for Christmas so I haven't bought a new record for about six months. I probably never will again."

Well that's that then.

Oh hang on, one more. Are there any records that you didn't show me today? The tape is off, so you can tell me in the strictest confidence.

"Well . . . (smiles guiltily) there are some Status Quo albums in the other room."

Gotcha.