BCR: So in terms of the three albums I’ve got, the first one, The Havering [2006], seems a lot more like an art record really and there’s a lot more pain in it…
Steve Gullick: Well that’s Gerry’s [Gerry Mitchell of Little Sparta] pain.
BCR: Not in his tattoos?
Steve Gullick: He’s not got any tattoos, it’s all on the records and in his head.
BCR: But then the second, Tenebrous Liar is a lot more controlled but still has that hardness and discordance whereas the last one is a more a traditionally structured album.
Steve Gullick: Well, as I said, I tried to make a pop record. That’s what this is for me. If the songs were recorded differently it could probably be a pop record. Is that being too naive? It’s an attempt at pop, pure and simple. The first album we did live basically, in my house.
BCR: How long did that take?
Steve Gullick: It was just two sessions.
BCR: You did Last Stand in 13 hours didn’t you? How long did Liar take?
Steve Gullick: That was recorded over three days at Tony’s [Tony Ash, guitarist] house.
BCR: It seems it’s getting shorter and shorter…
Steve Gullick: Well, I just wanted it to get done, get the pop shit out the way because I thought I was going to go in a more avant garde direction. But the process of making the pop shit into an album was so enjoyable that that’s the kind of shit that I’ve continued to write.
BCR: Each album are stand alones though, each one has its own personality. And to do that in only two years…
Steve Gullick: I’m really proud of the new record. The Mitchell one is more Gerry’s thing but I’ll do another one with him at some point and it’ll probably only take a day. We did a cover of a Beatles song, Fixing A Hole, which is just ludicrous. But for me doing the pop thing is more experimental than anything else I’ve done. In a way it’s more fun because the other stuff just drips. Whereas this stuff has to be worked on. It’s a good discipline. It’s what …Bender always wanted me to do but I just wouldn’t. I didn’t even like playing the same songs more than once.
BCR: Well, it’s hard to concentrate on one thing for more than a certain amount of time and I can’t figure out how bands do 100 dates with the same set over and over.
Steve Gullick: It would kill your creativity.
BCR: So, your photography, speaking of not being able to concentrate on one thing for too long, I noticed that as you go along your catalogue people look less and less into your lens. The early Nirvana, Sonic Youth and Patty Smith stuff they’re looking right at you and then now with the Nick Cave, John And Jehn and the rest they’re a little more…
Steve Gullick: I know why! Because in the early nineties I was quite handsome and as the years have progressed I’ve become increasingly ugly… Maybe I’m less engaging these days. Maybe I realise what they’re going through now. Obviously we’ve been photographed and it’s not a pleasant experience. I always had a lot of empathy with my favourite subjects. But now I have even more so maybe I don’t even try.
BCR: But the bands that you’re choosing at the moment…
Steve Gullick: I’m not choosing them. Since I haven’t been doing Loose Lips Sink Ships, which really was a case of photographing bands I loved, I’ve been concentrating on making the music myself and I haven’t been paying attention to new music. There’s a gap in the photography.
BCR: But stuff like the Duke Garwood picture…
Steve Gullick: That’s different. I did the exhibition [Rough Trade London Exhibition 2008] in April and I photographed Duke Garwood and John And Jehn specifically because I didn’t want to do an exhibition without them.
BCR: That Garwood photo though, you can imagine a dust bowl behind him or something…
Steve Gullick: I want to make photographs that are timeless. That picture of Duke could have been taken in the thirties which is what I wanted.
BCR: So do you have a first love?
Steve Gullick: Music.
BCR: Did you always want to do music and that led you to document it rather than do it? If you see what I mean…
Steve Gullick: I suppose I always fancied doing it but I never thought I’d be able to play the guitar or anything because I concentrated so hard on the photography. The music came from frustration really, being pissed off about things. I had a pretty volatile relationship with the music press. I fell out with all the magazines just by being uncompromising. I never fell out with Sound but… I was quite ambitious and I never did a front cover for Sound which pissed me off. Then I went to Melody maker and did a cover in two weeks.
BCR: So are you going to get …Bender back together now that you’re concentrating on the music?
Steve Gullick: The music is quite harrowing at times. There’s not many tunes on the album but some of it I love. There’s a couple of songs on there that I’d gladly play. It was only two years ago. It takes some bands five years to make a record. Fucking lazy cunts. How could they be that fucking lazy?! But playing that one gig 200 nights a year, it would suck the soul out of you. It’s a horrible lifestyle. Getting fucked every night. The only way of surviving life on the road for that long is to get fucked up. And how you going to write when you’re fucked up all the time. The only way is to create drama for yourself. In Soulsavers, we’ve only done three tours. We did a tour of America which was six or seven dates. We played in New York first and the drama had already started by then, I was fighting with the bass player before the first gig.
BCR: Why are you always starting fights with people?
Steve Gullick: I like things to be right. I’m a control freak…
BCR: Well, there only seems to be two ways to write in a band: democratically or with a dictator. There doesn’t seem to be any other way to do it.
Steve Gullick: The thing is rehearsal is really expensive. We’re so loud that it has to be done in a sound proofed place so we can’t do it in our houses. The gear we’ve got, you can’t turn it down so that’s the way it is. So for us to write as a band is nigh on impossible. There’s a band I fucking love called Codeine which I think the term slow-core was invented for. Slow and loud basically.
BCR: So Thurston Moore would approve?
Steve Gullick: Probably, yeah… I just love… Some of my favourite sounds when I was a kid was the washing machine or the vacuum cleaner. I might make a record… no, no it’s been done, I’m not going to do it better than Earth 2. I don’t think I’m patient enough to hold a note for that long. To just let it ring for that long. I’m fairly patient but I am in a hurry. We haven’t got long you know. The future scares the shit out of me and I want to get as much done as I can.
BCR: So how come you went behind the lens before you picked up a guitar?
Steve Gullick: I know I’m a good photographer but I worked fucking hard to achieve that. Now I’m putting the same effort into music. Twenty years ago I wouldn’t have been mature enough to not have died. If I’d started making music twenty years ago I would be dead. I would be dead. My touring, as a photographer, would be a day or two with a band on the road and within those day or twos I got pretty fucked up at various points. If I’d been doing it all the time I don’t think I would have survived. I had nothing to say back then anyway. I hadn’t sampled life’s misery. I know a lot of young people do but you get a lot more of it as you get older. Life gets shitter… Unless you’re me, in which case you turn shit into pleasure.
BCR: I agree, at the moment all I’m doing is trying to do only things that I’m proud of. Which is probably why I’m so poor… but it sounds like that’s what you’ve been doing your whole life.
Steve Gullick: No, I’m just lucky. I’m a jammy bastard. I got in just in time. I don’t think new photographers will achieve the success I have. I don’t think it’s possible anymore. Same with bands. The band as a hobby thing is going to become the norm.
BCR: I guess the only way to round this thing off is to ask, did you ever find out where your lost testicle went or is that a myth?
Steve Gullick: For the record, I have 2 bollocks, I woke up in Seattle one morning covered in scratches, hands on nuts to realize one was missing, I was still drunk and recalled having heard something about balls popping into the body if whacked and that the application of pressure to the groin could return it to it's usual place & acted accordingly.
Official photography site for Steve Gullick
