The Lords Of The New Church | Altared States

The Lords Of The New Church take communion with Steve Keaton

Article published in Sounds, 21st August, 1982

The Lords Of The New Church | Altared States | The name grates like a rusty chainsaw. Swill it around a little . . . the initial impression is one of contrivance; a desperate attempt perhaps to intrigue. Somehow it conjures up rogue images from the second great Apes movie ‘Beneath . . . ‘ like the scenes of the mutant hordes worshipping the Alpha Omega bomb, their mega-ton god.

Remember how the muties removed their latex masks to reveal heads like boiled sprouts? The Lords have that same kind of freaky religious connotation.

The Lawds of th’ Noo Church!! Somehow the tag just dares you to be cynical, especially with the realisation that beneath those ebon vestments lurk the leather bodies of some notable (not to say notorious) punk refugees . . .

JUST CHECK out the line up: Dave Tregunna aka Kermit (ex-Sham) on bass, Nicky Turner (ex-Barracudas) on drums, Brian James (founder member of the Damned — y’know, the good Captain’s backing band!) on guitar, and sleazy Stiv Bators (ex-Dead Boys) behind the mike. I mean these guys are the original Doom patrol!

My first encounter with the band, some months ago now, had left me reeling. I was convinced I’d seen the reincarnation of Stiv’s Dead Boys. The mirror image was perfect. They had that same spasmodic class and juvenile arrogance. The wocka-wocka guitar had me just hanging in agonised anticipation of that classic “Sonic Reducer” riff.

The Lords Of The New Church | Altared States

The Lords may have been old but they were still loud and real snotty. Only their clumsy handle had seemed rather incongruous — Dead Boys Two would have seemed more apt — but things change and their debut album presents us with a very different kind of animal.

They’ve traded their hard rock punk bravado for stealth, style and guile and the songs, with a nod and a wink towards Iggy and Co, burn brightly with pain, passion and paranoia. If they hint at anyone now I think it must be Tanz Der Youth, James’ earlier psycho-hippie outing. The Lords are Tanz through a mincer.

Not far from their Illegal Records HQ in a sprawling pub off Portobello Road, the band talk philosophy and nonsense in about equal amounts while I sharpen my knives with a vague hope of revealing the sprouts behind the masks.

Stiv’s distinctive nasal drawl fills the air. He’s hard at work explaining the group’s weird monicker. Incidentally the singer’s bright and articulate, quite unlike his gum chewin’, bum exposin’ stage personna. “Y’see the name came before the concept,” he whines. “Miles (Copeland — Illegal’s Big Boss) had this movie script called ‘The Lords Of Discipline’ and he asked us if we’d like to use the name so we’d get a job on the movie.

Well we thought the idea sucked, but we kinda liked the idea of ‘The lords’ so we thought we’d keep that. Then when we were kicking around some more names Brian came up with ‘The new church’, thinking of the Adverts song and the two just seemed to fit together.

It was after that when we realised the name actually meant something. We started seeing all the imagery, like how rock ‘n’ roll parallels religion —say, I sound like an intellectual hippie here, huh?” He laughs.

“The thing is,” says James, “in the olden days people always used to get all their information from the Bible and religion and it was very subversive at the time, simply because it was their only real means of communication.”

The Lords Of The New Church | Altared States

Stiv: “But then big business took over the church and it, like, outmoded itself. So that today the kids don’t read the Bible or listen to religion anymore, but they do listen to albums and they read the lyrics. Music has replaced religion, y’see? And you can get the most subversive lyrics on an album . . . “

“With the way the media is controlled rock ‘n’ roll is the purest form of communication,” declares James. “There’s so much withheld from people, so many lies that the only way to really circulate ideas is through lyrics, and you have to be careful because even they can be controlled by record companies. The old church has been overrun by big organisations — we’re just saying that music is the new church.”

BRIAN is a difficult bloke to talk to in that while he looks you in the face his eyes seem focused on some point far beyond your head. Talk about discerning! Sometimes you wonder if he even sees you at all. Although his speech remains clear throughout our chat I kinda suspect that he was in fact well potted.

Stiv calls him the Dean Martin of rock which I’d guess is not too far off the beam. Dave admits that the great challenge facing the Lords is keeping Brian out of pubs. James takes it all with glassy-eyed good humour.

“It’s taken a while for the band to find it’s character,” says Stiv. “The songs have changed a lot over the past few months, we were actually rewriting in the studio. I think that it wasn’t until we went in to record the album that we realised who we were.”

Dave: “Originally we had kids coming to see us hoping for the Damned/Dead Boys/Sham’s greatest hits and like we were being slagged off for being has-beens so things weren’t so good, but now with the album out perhaps they’ll see what we’re trying to do.”

Nicky: “The last thing we want to be thought of is some kind of punk supergroup playing old hits and shit like that!”

Stiv and Brian, the main creative force behind the Lords, have known each other for some time. “We became friends back in ’77, it was a real natural thing,” explains the singer.

“The Damned and the Dead Boys played together at CBGB’s and then we came over for some London dates. It was obvious when we played together than Brian should have been the guitarist for the Dead Boys or that I should have been singing for the Damned, we both knew that. We both shared a love for that Detroit sound, y’know Iggy Pop.”

The Lords Of The New Church | Altared States

He suddenly grows quite excited. “No, the reason it really works between us is because of astrology! There’s this cosmic thing like, I’m Libra and he’s Aquarius, my perfect working partner. And we both get on really well with Taureans, which is the other two. See, we’ve used magic!”

Stiv looks at me gravely from behind his black shades. He’s trying to wind me up. This is just the first of several outrageously tall tales that he relates during the course of the night. Every one is recounted with convincing solemnity. They’re so outlandish you almost begin to wonder if they’re true.

I put it to Brian that he must have been fairly disheartened with the way most of his post-Damned work unceremoniously bit the dust.

“No not really,” he replies, “it was all just warm up stuff for the real thing!”

So what’s the difference then? What’s gonna make the Lords work out?

“It’s that we are a bunch of guys who are really together, we’ve got the same feeling. They all play real good, and we don’t give a toss what anybody else thinks about us. Basically we just gel together great, it’s the best thing that could ever happen to us. We’re used to all that ‘Has-beens’ shit, but now we’ve put it all down on vinyl so people can make up their own minds. That’s the important thing.”

The Lords Of The New Church | Altared States

Dave: “Like, I think it’s really hard for a new band in England like us to try and get away from that image of punk superstars.”

Brian (sourly): “You mean has-beens!”

Dave: “— or whatever, and find people with minds open enough to take us as we are. We can only go out and play. Of course we could leave the country and base ourselves elsewhere, but that would be the easy way out. If we can’t prove ourselves here as a band then we ain’t no good.”

“And besides,” says Brian grinning, “I must have self respect.”

Stiv: “We could easily have gone to America and sold our names there. We would have been accepted over there, but we’re against that. We want to do it in London.”

“Anyway I don’t want to go back there. When the Dead Boys broke up (he waffles on about management hassles) I just wanted to get the hell outta the place!”

WITH Stiv having the reputation of being just a little wacked out of gear (he can’t be too far gone seeing how he’s just got spliced) I ask the others what it’s like working with him. After all he can be a little bit over the top at times . . .

“Well the funny thing is,” says Nicky “people always used to say how OTT Stiv was live and that he should calm down and pose a bit. So he did and no one liked it. So now he doesn’t know how to act.”

Dave: “He’s alright, it’s his ego that’s the problem!”

You tend to get quite manic on stage Stiv, have you ever done yourself any damage?

“Yeah, well I used to with the Dead Boys,” he grins. “Look at that!” He quickly rolls up his t-shirt to reveal a white scar some 12″ long arching across his hollow chest. “A razor slash, ” he rasps. “A girl slashed me on our first anniversary gig.

Like, did you ever see that movie ‘Slapshot’? About that no-good hockey team who made their name through violence? Well it was like that with the Dead Boys. We were a really shitty live band and then all the violence started.

The Lords Of The New Church | Altared States

Like in America, punk means different things to the kids — it means gangs and violence. We used to get gangs coming down to fight us to show how they were tougher than us. It got to the point where every gig down at CBGB’s ended up in a big fight.

I got taken to hospital twice in a row, it was getting kinda ridiculous! But then none of us got hurt really bad (a razor slash across the chest isn’t bad!?!, (except for our drummer Johnny Blitz who got stabbed and nearly died.”

The Lords must be pretty laid back for you then?

“Yeah, I don’t get hurt too much with this band. In the States they pull guns on you but over here they just spit and throw beer.”

The album seems to embrace some fairly hefty ideas, it’s not (shudder) a concept album perchance?

“Nah,” says Stiv. “A lot of the lyrics were written at the same time but—”

It is thematically linked though . . .

“Yeah, it’s got this idea of searching out the truth. Like on the sleeve it says ‘The sword is the truth of us all’ and that’s the idea behind it. But we’re not trying to preach with our music, it’s only that there’s so many lies and conspiracies that we feel we should use our music to expose them.”

Brian: “Too right!”

Brian: “I’m getting more out of this band than I’ve ever gotten out of any other. When I came out with the Damned’s stuff that was like an expression of absolute relief with what had gone before, now these songs are an expression of all kinds of things, all kinds of colours.”

“I call what we’re doing Apocarock,” declares Stiv. “Y’see the whole world’s collapsing at the moment, everything predicted in the Bible is coming true. The American government is orchestrating everything towards a nuclear world war. And it’s coming real soon!

We’re not pessimistic though, you just have to look at the way things are going. Things can’t go on like they are, the new age of man is comin’! It’s time to start a new civilisation because this one isn’t working.”

The singer stares at me blackly. The others reflect his gravity.

Then he adds: “Look we’ll have to end this now, I’ve gotta go and do my laundry.”

The masks remain intact. The Lords of the New Church laugh.