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Many of
you will recognise the name Ricky Warwick as the lead singer/guitarist
from the 80's metal band The Almighty. The band may be gone but
the man still lives on to continue his musical legacy as a solo artist.
Tonight we catch up with Ricky shortly before his show in Newcastle to
tell us about his stunning new album 'Belfast Confetti' and the
inspiration behind it.
MM
- Hi Ricky, how are you this
evening?
Ricky
-
Pretty well, how are you?
MM - I’m Fine thanks.
Ricky - Good.
MM -Thanks for taking the time out before the show to chat with us, we
really appreciate it.
Ricky - No
problem.
MM - How has the tour been going so far? You've toured across
Ireland, Scotland and now England I believe.
Ricky - It's been very good, its
been a lot of fun, especially last night in Glasgow. It’s been
the highlight so far for me. It's been rolling on quite nicely.
MM - Glasgow crowds have a reputation for being quite enthusiastic
and lively from what I hear.
Ricky - With The Almighty being from
Glasgow it's always a bit special when we go back there.
MM - An adopted home town?
Ricky - No not really the Almighty
were from there but I’m a Belfast boy born and bred, but my adopted
town would have be Los Angeles where I live now.
MM - How have the new songs been going down with the audiences?
Ricky - So far so good, people seem
to be liking it, even on occasions people have been singing along!
(laughs). It's been good.
MM - The setlist for the tour, is it
mainly songs from the new album or a mixture of your back catalogue?
Ricky - No it's a real mixture,
something’s from the Almighty right through to the new album.
There’s something for everyone.
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MM
- Do you find doing an acoustic set helps convey your story more
than perhaps an all-electric set could?
Ricky - Yeh maybe it does,
because it's stripped down to its purest form just voice and
guitar, but if people know the song or the record them they'll
know it anyway, so if your doing electric they still get it, but
I think you get the intimacy level more with just you and a
guitar.
MM - The new album Belfast Confetti is a real personal album
why now go back to your roots after all this time?
Ricky - I think I just
didn’t have the balls to write it before to be honest with
you. I just thought it might be cheesy or people
wouldn’t want to listen to it, and it's really about getting
the confidence to turn around and say this is a record I need to
write and a record I need to make. That was last year so I
went ahead and did it full on, no holds barred as it were.
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MM
- How long did it take to complete the album?
Ricky - To write and record it was
about a year on and off. I wasn’t in the studio all that time.
What I did was write a couple of songs, go in and record them and live
with them for a bit, then go back and tweak them, and that was the
on-going process for about a year on and off. It was all pretty
quick.
MM - The album is a more stripped down album than your previous two
albums 'Tattoos & Alibis' and 'Love Many Trust Few', did you find
this more reflecting the mood of the album?
Ricky - I really wanted to catch
what the show's like when I’m singing live with just the acoustic
guitar. I kept the instruments down to a minimum, that was the
idea behind it. I mean I did the two previous albums with Joe,
which was amazing and fantastic, but for this one it was time to change
it a little bit just to stop the repetitive thing coming in.
That's not to say I won't work with Joe again, I’d love to work with
Joe again, but for this album I wanted it to be very pure and very raw.
MM - How often do you go back to Northern Ireland these days?
Ricky - A LOT! I feel like I’m
living back there at the minute. I’ve been a lot. I’ve
just spend the last two months there and I’ve been there over the last
year and a half touring constantly, which has been great.
MM - And why did you move to the US?
Ricky - Well I was touring so much
there, and I’ve always liked the United States and my wife’s from
there so that was the main reason.
MM - Why the move from Ireland to Strathaven in Glasgow?
Ricky - Well it was my fathers decision
purely to get away from what was going on there.
MM
- What is your biggest memory of growing up in Newtownards, County Down?
Ricky - The biggest memory was going up
Scrabble Hill and the view from up there when I was a kid was and it
still is, something amazing. It's something I like to do when I go
back there. The view just makes you speechless and its still one
of my earliest memories.
MM - What differences do you notice to the Belfast of old and now?
Ricky - It's 100% different.
It's a completely different vibe, it's a completely different city. The
opportunities are there. Bands come and play there and there’s
loads of things to do. People aren’t looking over their
shoulders all the time so much. It's changed beyond recognition,
but in a good way.
MM - Is there still things simmering in the background?
Ricky - I still think you’ve still got
pockets of people living in the dark ages and have the mentality of
morons who want to hurt people because of their religious persuasion,
but I think the general consensus is that 99.9% of people, they’ve
left those things behind for good. It's great.
MM - Yes there’s a new generation coming through now.
Ricky - Yes people have enough stuff
to worry about these days. Life’s hard enough with out the
pettiness of all that really to be honest for you, and people now think
the democratic way is the way forward and that you should let the people
decide what’s good for Northern Ireland, let the majority speak.
MM - You originally come from a Punk background, what made you start
a Metal band?
Ricky - I never started a Metal band
I started a Punk band and was congealed to being in a Metal band by the
guitar player and the bass player. I always liked bands like
Motorhead, AC/DC, stuff like that and early Maiden as well as all the
Punk stuff. But I always wanted to combine the two and take the
attitude of Punk with the heavy riffs of a Metal band and mix the two
together. I think that’s what The Almighty were all about.
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MM
- What is the biggest misconception people make about Ricky
Warwick?
Ricky - I’ve always had
this feeling that people think I’m arrogant and I’ve been
accused of this a few times. People think that because of
the way I look that I’m this ferocious guy, this person who
goes about screaming and yelling all the time, and I’m the
complete opposite of that. Hopefully I don't come across a
arrogant either. I've never tried to be, I just believe
strongly in what I do. I stand up for that and if that
comes across as being arrogant it's not meant to be.
MM - I must admit you’ve never come across as arrogant all the
times I’ve seen you on stage, scary yes, but never arrogant.
(laughs)
Ricky - (laughs) Yes,
people who don’t know you do that, they like to say things and
bad mouth you and stuff like that, without even trying to get to
know that person. They just judge the person on what they
think they should be like. At the end of the day I’m a
fan and I’m doing it because I’m a fan of music and I love
playing. I love making music and I’m blessed that I can
do this for a living and I have never taking it for granted.
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MM
- Last time we interviewed you was in 2000 and you described yourself as
… "Easy Going, Driven and a Manic Terrorist" … what about
now, how would you describe yourself today?
Ricky -
Easy going, still driven, probably a bit quieter on the manic terrorist
front but I still know very much what I want to do, and I don’t suffer
fools anymore. I know what works for me and at the end of the day
I love my family and my music is my second big love in my life.
And if my family are ok then I can concentrate on doing this to the best
of my ability, and if can do this to the best of my ability then I can
feed and cloth my family for the foreseeable future. I think as
you get older you do tend to mellow. I still get angry but unlike
before where I’d get a big hammer and crash it about, now I get a
small hammer and just chip away at things.
MM - What is 'Belfast Confetti'?
Ricky - Basically it's anything
you can throw during a riot. Nuts, bolts, bricks, dogs cats,
bottles, you name it, if you can throw it then it's known as 'Belfast
Confetti'.
MM - Who is Hank and why does he have the Blues?
Ricky -
It's Hank Williams and he has a song called 'Morning The Blues', it's a
very famous Hank Williams song and the whole song is about waking up and
feeling really bad, hence 'Hanks Blues'.
MM - You’ve hooked up with Eddie Spaghetti for this tour how did you
two get together?
Ricky - It was through a friend
of my wife who knew Eddie and his wife Jess. When he was playing
in LA he had his little boy Quatro with him, he’s here tonight, and
they needed somebody to baby-sit him, so we have kids and he came over
and stayed with us. So I met Eddie through that and we have the
same agent, so when this came up we thought it would work really well.
MM - There are a lot of Celtic influences in the album, did they come
naturally when you were writing the songs or were they an after thought
in the studio?
Ricky - No
they come naturally. I listen to a lot of Irish music like Lizzy,
Horslips and Irish Folk music Kristy Moore and things like that so it's
something that I’m very aware of.
MM - One obvious question your fans want us to ask is whether there’s
a chance of another Almighty album or tour making an appearance at some
point?
Ricky - I
don’t know, that’s the honest answer. I know it's really
boring but I really don't know. Somebody should really take the
bull by the horns and say yes we’re gonna do this and that guy should
really be me, but I’m so busy with this and I really don’t want the
Almighty to be an after thought. That wouldn’t do it justice.
It would belittle what the bands stands for and I want to give it my
full attention and concentrate 100%. But right now my head's not
there and my heart's not there. So that’s what's holding it
back, I think there’s a willingness to do it, it's just when.
It's not if, more when.
MM - What memories stand out for that period in your career?
Ricky - Oh
it's the soundtrack to my life, it's my whole life, it made me what I
am. Without the Almighty I wouldn’t have a solo career, so I’m
thankful for that. I got to play with some of the biggest bands in
the world and got to meet some of the coolest people. I got to
travel the world with my buddies and we had a kick ass rock n' roll
band. So all that is just great. We went further than we ever
thought.
MM - You're currently signed to DR2 – what did they have to offer that
made them stand out? Why them?
Ricky - I
just thought they were a great little label, I talked to Andy Kerns of
Therapy, he’s a good mate of mine and he highly recommended them.
I wrote Eric a hand written letter just saying I'd recorded the album
and wanted a label to put it out and he thought the hand written letter
blew him away as it was old school and Eric replied, he came all the way
to Greenock to see my play live and offered me a deal the next day.
MM - Where does Ricky Warwick go from here?
Ricky - I
think he'll just keep touring and writing records to the best of his
ability and as long as it's good and it feels right and it's fun, I'll
continue to do that till I drop down dead on stage, which hopefully
won't be for a long, long time! (laughs).
MM
- We'd like to thank Ricky for taking the time out to chat with us this
evening. It's not often you get the chance to meet and chat openly
and honestly with one of your heroes but tonight we've done just that.
If you haven't caught one of Ricky's solo shows yet then be sure to
check them out, they're fantastic fun and a highly entertaining evening.
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