hiapop Blog makes no excuses for being huge fans on Radio Lancashire’s On The Wire. As the show celebrates its 30th Anniversary, we bring you several a quick Q&A that was sent Steve Barker's way.
hiapop Blog: Happy Birthday to you!
Thanks!
1984 – The Smiths released
their debut album, Philip Larkin turned down the job of Poet Laureate and John
Bond left Burnley Football Club. Were
any of these more important than the birth of On the Wire?
Not in my mind at least. On the Wire is
something of a broadcasting quirk, I don’t think the BBC or any ILR station
would start to host such a show. When you look at what’s going out today it’s
all nicely packaged into demographics and digestible audio bites – and every
seems to be excited all the time.
When you first started with
On the Wire, you probably didn’t expect to still be on air thirty years later
with the longest running alternative music programme on the BBC. What were your hopes?
We didn’t really have any expectations as we
were so pleased to be doing what we were doing, 3 hours of freeform radio on a
Sunday afternoon. The programme got very popular very quickly across the
North-West and nationally/internationally because there wasn’t anything like it
elsewhere.
What do you think have been
the most exciting changes in music since 1984?
Well
I must admit to not waiting for these “changes” to come along like a bus. Most
changes aren’t really recognised and when they are then there tends to be a
quick absorption into the mainstream like rap and dubstep for instance. What’s
more interesting is looking for the work of individuals who don’t play by the
rules.
And the most dire? Reality talent shows must be up there?
None
of those count as “music”. One of the worst things to happen is that everyone
wants to be a DJ. The number of musicians hosting radio shows is alarming, it’s
also a lazy attitude hiring these people rather than looking for genuine talent
for radio.
In the early days you had
some big names through the doors – Depeche Mode, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Adrian
Sherwood – do any stick in your mind for any reason?
Well,
it was early days, but Lee Perry comes to mind most. When we met him at first
he was not the fabled trickster that people see these days, he seemed very
tired and a little disillusioned. When he met Roger Eagle it was great; Roger
was showing him all these Jamaican 7” singles that Lee had produced and Lee had
actually forgotten some of them, he had a ballpoint pen ticking some of the
labels and writing comments. He stayed at our house and the kids loved him. I
am glad loads of people have given him money for his foolery over the past ten
years or so.
Your association with Adrian
Sherwood and On-U Sound is well documented, how did the friendship come about?
When
I presented a show called “Spinoff” we played a lot of dub and reggae and I
heard Adrian’s stuff before he started On-U Sound, he had a label called
4DRhythms so I contacted him and we did a phone interview around 1980, later
that year I met him and Kishi when they were starting up On-U.
Do you mind being compared to
John Peel? Is it a fair comparison?
I
suppose it’s inevitable, although we were very different we were basically just
punters who enjoyed a tune. John was
always very supportive to On the Wire though. There could only be one John
Peel, as the BBC has so adequately proved - as no show ever replaced his and
they keep on running tributes rather than taking chances. Oh! And I didn’t go
to public school.
You don’t do Twitter or
Facebook, is that you being a bit Old Skool or can you just not be arsed?
I am
deeply mistrustful of both, their ethics and impact on daily life, also the
adoption of their use, without competition or proper oversight, by many public
organisations for adoption as unchallenged in-house communication tools.
Where’s the regulation that covers their operations except in the hands of
their shareholders. Lots of people I know are withdrawing from either or both.
If anyone wants to write to me they can contact me at the BBC and I will reply.
It’s open communication. Meanwhile we have our websites and I don’t really have
anything else to say to the world, why would we be so presumptuous? Who would
any serious person really want to know what Gary Lineker thinks about anything?
Burnley in the Premiership
whilst you work in the centre of Blackburn must be fun?
I
sneak in and out of town under cover of darkness with my claret and blue bobble
hat on.
Do you still have a vinyl
copy of the show theme, Bugs On the Wire?
Both
a finished copy and a white label! We were supposed to do a follow up called
Shocks On the Wire and I had all the tracks, but the distributor went bust.
My everlasting memory of On
the Wire will be hearing Fats Comet’s Bop Bop and then discovering On U
Sound. It’s fair to say the two changed
my life. Has there been any record that
has had such an impact on you?
Funny
you mention “Bop Bop” as I have had a few credits on records over the years but
that one is my favourite as I am sandwiched between Afrika Bambaataa and James
Brown! I can’t recall anything specific that provoked an epiphany except maybe
when I was 14 buying a deleted copy of Robert Johnson’s “King of the Delta Blues Singers” for an old style
pound at Accrington’s Bandbox Records, sadly no longer with us, it seemed so
exotic and distant back then; also a few years later hearing Terry Riley’s
“Rainbow in Curved Air” for the first time altered the possibilities of music
for me.
Do you think Clitheroe has
ever recovered from 2,500 people descending on the town to watch The Fall play
live at the Castle?
That
was a peculiar day – and only one policeman. We recently found the original
quarter inch tapes for that gig. I quite regularly got asked for them but since
I found them no one asks anymore. It’s like when the original interview I did
with Jimi Hendrix in January 1967 was published in full a while ago everyone
wanted the cassette tapes.
The On the Wire Xmas party at
The Ritz in Manchester attracted Gary Clail, 808 State and Neneh Cherry amongst
others. Were they all invited?
Each
and every one, along with Mark Stewart, Adrian Sherwood, Little Annie and A Guy
Called Gerald. We do have the master tapes for this gig! I recall Neneh was 8
months pregnant and left the Bomb the Bass gig across town to come and close
the show at the Ritz, she was huge in more ways than one!
Fenny, Jim, Pete Haig and
Andy Holmes are a good team. Could you
have done it without them? You can be
honest, they’ll never know.
Also we had Mikey Martin and Jethro (Culf)
Binks as previous engineers to Jim. We have a very strong and loyal team over
the years
Where is home? Brierfield, Beijing or St Annes?
Back
from China for three years now so it’s the West Coast for me!
I’m coming for a meal, what
are you cooking?
You’d
be waiting a long time, not cooked seriously for years. I blame my wife Jan who
is an excellent cook.
What was the last gig you
went to?
The
Abyssinians at Manchester Band on the Wall.
And the first?
Probably
a gig at the old Nelson Imperial, maybe the Animals or Bo Diddley or David John
and the Mood from Preston. Though I did see the Beatles in Blackpool
at either the ABC or Odeon, I forget. Then I also saw the Big Three at a youth
club in Accrington – maybe that was it.
The show has been under
threat of being cut three times. Are you
here to stay now?
I
would not count on it.
What happens when you want to
retire? Can I take over?
You
can scramble over my body when I fall.
On behalf of fans and
listeners of On the Wire all over the World, have a Happy Birthday. And thank you.
You’re
welcome.
Links
On The Wire blogspot
Depeche Mode on hiapop
Lee 'Scratch' Perry on hiapop
Adrian Sherwood on hiapop
Mark Stewart on hiapop
Published on Louder Than War 21/09/14 - here
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