STUMP

This is a fan site and is not run by Kev Hopper or any member of Stump!! I have lifted the text from Kev Hopper's Stump page on his website at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/kevin.hopper1/Stump.htmlForming the band In 1982 I met guitarist Chris Salmon in Whitstable on a summer holiday. He was a very creative musician with a strong RnBstyle but he also had a really unusual, perculiar streak to his playing especially when he used the wang bar on his Strat. Crucially, he enjoyed adding stuff to my basslines, was never short of ideas and never said this ones in A. He put stuff together in exactly the same way as I did - by cut 'n'pasteing - and I knew there and then that he would make the an ideal writing partner. A year and a half later we got together in London with the intention of forming a band. We advertised for a drummer in Melody Maker and Rob McKahey turned up - he was an obvious first choice right from the start not only for his tub-thumping but also for his astonishing facility for self-promotion and bullshit. Hed recently moved from Cork and knew lots of Irish musicians in London including members of bands such as Five Go Down To The Sea and MicroDisney. Among them was someone called Mick Lynch who Rob invited down to our rehearsal basement on the Old Kent road. Mick had a light style and wrote funny little vignettes about tupperware strippers ! ! and American tourists. We liked him and he handled the difficult job of slotting words into the arrangements easily.When we started playing our first gigs it was obvious that he would be a great front man - even people who didnt like the music still had a great time at the gigs watching Micks performance, so he extended the appeal of the band. With a ready-made Irish audience that spread the word fast, it didnt take long before we began packing places out becoming one of the hottest live acts on the London indie scene. When we recorded our first e.p Mud On A Colon in 1986 on a small budget for the Ron Johnson label, the press picked up on it with enthusiasm and a Peel session followed.Quirking Out A production company normally used to managing record producers approached us with the offer of long term management and finances for the recording of a mini-album on our own label. Quirk Out was made at Rockfield studios with Hugh Jones at the desk. It enjoyed a long stint around the top of the indie charts and more Peel sessions followed and a NME cassette - C86 - added to our popularity (even though I thought it was the worst recorded track on the tape at the time). This was a happy exciting time. The influences we all brought to the band were working well at this point, even though our democratic writing and rehearsal process was tortuously slow. It took us months to fashion all the wobbly noises, tumbling drums and lyrics into songs. Much was made about the Beefheart influence, but only myself and Rob were fans. Chris and Mick didnt know his music and didnt want to get to know it, either. We were constantly on the road and the gigs were hilarious affairs but always musically exciting. You could get into it for pure entertainment but there was also plenty for alternative music fans. Our audience were divided into 3 stratas of people: nutters jumping around at the front, rock punters in the middle, and chin scratching serious types at the back.It was about this time that Ensign Records started to take an interest. At first we heard that they were only interested in Mick and not the rest of the band but when the Tube TV programme decided to make a video of Buffalo and then featured us playing live on the show we were at the height of our popularity and they must have thought its now or never and snapped us up. Ensign were run by Nigel Grange, a very successful old- school record company man and Chris Hill a well-known DJ who had had his heyday in the seventies introducing disco to the UK. They specialised in Irish rock acts and had had huge success with Sinead OConnor and the Waterboys and to be honest...we were wondering what the hell they wanted with us. Recording A Fierce Pancake All signed up, we were ready to record our first full album and we felt it was time to try a different producer. Id been a big admirer of German samplist Holger Hiller and the two remarkable albums he made - A bunch of Foulness in the Pit and Oben Im Eck which blended music concrete forms with pop. Id just acquired my first sampler at this time and his music had made a big impression on me - I was trying to incorporate sampling into the band as much as possible and really thought it was the most radical musical instrument ever ( and still do). Eventually we all agreed on giving Holger a try with Stephen Street engineering. After some initial recording in London we were booked into Hansa studios in Berlin and work began on what was to become the Fierce Pancake album. Everything seemed fine at first - the recording was going well with all the backing tracks sounding great. However, after a few days working together, it became apparent that a personality clash was developing between Holger and some members of the band. Holger had a cool, methodical approach which did not always suit the moment and the working environment of the studio and Stump were, in essence, a band full of hotheads. It certainly didnt help when he kept saying rock music is dead... even if it was true! Stephen Street provided a calm influence, but when he left after two weeks to start work with Morrisey, the situation got worse. I must confess that I wasnt party to most of this as I had finished all the bass parts in the first few days and was hanging around for the rest of the time waiting to put the samples down. I remember being shocked on the flight back home when it was suggested we throw Holger off the project altogether and call Hugh Jones up again to finish off and mix it - in fact, I had no idea that feelings were running that strong. When we got back to London a final decision was made to exclude Holger permanently. I thought this reflected badly on myself as Id been instrumental in choosing him - Id been naive and hadnt thought about how the personalities would work at all. But another producer was suggested to us - the hottest remixer in town was the phrase I remember (I still cringe at that) and we agreed to meet him, on the insistance of our management company and Ensign.Trouble at Mill The first thing this producer ( Ill call him X) suggested was a reworking of two of the songs already recorded which he would supervise and arrange. This immediately got my hackles up because Stump songs were very personal affairs that were painstakingly knitted together as only we knew how. Personally, I didnt think there was anything wrong with them in the first place. We also regarded arrangement as part of composition and co-operating with this guy meant forgetting this very important point. Never the less, the majority of the band decided to give it a go. Events took a rather predictable turn when he began simplifying the bass and guitar parts and got Rob playing bland beats that any third-rate indie drummer would have been proud of. When Mick, one day, casually remarked that he would like to do a cover version of El Paso I was flabbergasted when X actually took it seriously and began wasting hours of expensive studio time producing a version of it! After a couple of days, I had decided that we were loosing all sense of objectivity and were sliding into oblivion, but when I made my feelings clear it created friction in the band because opinion was divided as to how well the tracks were progressing. Its fair to say that Mick and Rob were much better at talking to the Ensign boys than Chris and myself and they almost acted like emissaries while we took care of the music. When Ensign and the management asked us all to be open-minded about the situation and see it through, Mick and Rob were far less critical and more obliging due to their extra contact with Ensign so when I spoke out I was disturbing the peace and openly jepordising the relationship with the record company. Mick in particular did not like confrontation and was very angry with me. But the issue was simple for me: I resented the producer, the manager and the record company because THEY WERE ALL TAKING THE PISS OUT OF MY BELOVED BAND ... AND HAD TO BE STOPPED!What was going on here? Wed gone from an Avant Garde genius who found rock and roll boring to a pop producer who thought we should be doing C&W cover versions! When the record company eventually came down for a listen, the atmosphere was inflammatory and a ferocious row blew up with everyone shouting and screaming at each other (mostly at me). It was an ugly scene and I would have walked out that day if Chris hadnt stuck up for me.Money Money Money The whole situation was exasperated by knowing how much money was riding on a result. The studio bill alone came in at over a grand a day. We had heard that X comanded a high price for his sevices but when someone spotted his bill at the office there was widespread disbelief at the size of it - remember, this was the late eighties ... the era of silly money. I remember one day at the studio he took exception to the singer from Transvision Vamp (a well known band at the time, who were also recording there) teasing him about his pay packet being even bigger than his ego. I didnt think she knew anything about him, but it seemed his reputation had proceeded him.When you know there is serious money at stake, youre under pressure to get it right and there is a great temptation to say yes to everything. The general opinion was that wed fucked-up once already and another fuck-up would finish us. When the tracks were eventually completed I was appalled at how slick, polished and bland they sounded ...it just wasnt us - in fact, I didnt even bother to play bass on two of the tracks - the parts were sequenced in my absense. In the end - and thousands of pounds later - the two reworked tracks and the cover version were dumped with only Charlton Heston surviving. The management then asked Hugh to come back and rescue the situation and mix the recordings from Hansa. It was a relief to see him back. Wed survived the experience intact, but I could see things up ahead threatening our future that were nothing to do with record companies, managers or producers.After the Album Spending the best part of 9 months giving birth to A Fierce Pancake meant wed dropped out of gigging for quite some time and there had been some significant changes on the scene while we were away. The focus had shifted to 'dance' music and organised raves were happening up and down the country. Remix DJs and keyboard wizards such as Adamski and Mr Monday were calling all the shots. There had been a sharp decline in the fortune of Indie bands of every kind - it was hardly surprising in retrospect, considering the plethora of goths, shambling bands and drippy Velvet Underground clones. However, I never considered Stump part of that scene - I thought we were much better than all of them ( yes I did! ) . Those who wanted to survive were getting out fast, learning how to make House music and trading their guitars for Atari computers and samplers.Despite the difficult time we had making A Fierce Pancake I was happy with it from an artistic point of view. It was a dark, complex record - far more serious- sounding than our previous stuff. Perhaps Rob and Chris might have preferred the more immediate vibe of Quirk Out but I liked the richer sound and addition of sampling. The record worked on many levels and was beautifully mixed by Hugh in the end. The two dedications on the album to Wilhelm Reich and Flann O' Brian summed up the spirit of the record. No other rock band sounded anything like us. Now it was time to get back on the road and tour.Chaos was the song selected from the album for the first single. I was never clear why this was chosen as there was no discussion beforehand or formal band meeting with Ensign, but I heard from Rob, much later on, that Mick had lobbied hard as it was his favourite track. It was a good track, all right, but hardly commercial! I thought there were more obvious choices on the album but the decision appeared to be final. Despite a lavish promo for the single, initial sales figures suggested a gloomy forecast, both for the single and the album. When we came to do the British tour we played to half-empty venues and returned home demoralised. Ironically, these were our first gigs with tour support involving a road crew with a bloody great truck, P.A. and light show which added to the embarrassment...and Ensign were starting to get switchy about seeing zero return on their investment too.Charlton Heston ! ! was chosen as the second single and a promo was made with director, Tim Pope (and a thousand live frogs) at the cost of nearly fifty grand. It was easily the most commercial song on the record, but despite asking the Irrestible Force to do a remix for us, the song proved emanently resistable and only nudged into the top 60 for a week before disappearing altogether. Time for a Change This had a depressing effect on the band and for the first time we started looking inward at ourselves and examining the sort of music we were making. The unshakable conviction we had in ourselves slowly started to evaporate and we starting to pull in different directions. Rob and Chris appeared to be looking for active solutions to our lack of commerciality and were drifting towards a more basic rock approach - they were playing Beatles and Stones tapes all the time and enthusing about bands like Husker Du and the Pixies. I was loosing interest in the bass and spending hours programming and sampling and going further left field. Mick remained fairly neutral. It was clear that we couldnt make another Fierce Pancake, but before the quirky, wobbly Stump sound got an overhaul we all needed to agree where we were going first.It seemed to me that in order to solve the problem we would have to test our versatility and risk upsetting the fixed roles we had established within the band over the years. We would have to listen to each other seriously and figure out how we could bring new interests together sucessfully and practically. But we never got round to agreeing on anything in the end. We only knew what we disagreed on: I wasnt interested in going more rocky and playing straight bass; Chris and Rob werent interested in moving to the left field. I thought the samples could play an even more prominent part in the sound and we could still retain the set role of the guitar and drums but the others were sceptical about this and it proved impossible to develop the idea further than a few rehearsals with Rob. I could see that Chris felt uncomfortable when I wasnt playing bass - after all, this was the way we had written everything for the last 4 years. All in all, we seemed unable to make the changes necessary for the survival of the band. All the disappointments and the poor performance of the album and singles had had the effect of lowering our morale and sapping our energy.When Mick and Rob left for a promo tour of the States, Chris and I stayed back to write as we were desperately short of new material. When they returned home everyone was disappointed because we hadnt come up with much at all and were finding it difficult to avoid repeating ourselves. Chris had actually had more success writing with Mick around this time. There were about half a dozen ideas hanging around, but not much else. When we eventually came to demo the new songs Ensign were not impressed at all. In a last desparate attempt to get the band kick-started again they released Buffalo as a single - we couldnt even be bothered to tell them it was a lousy idea. When it flopped, as we knew it would, despondency set in with a vengeance. No one wanted to do anything in the rehearsals at Elephant & Castle anymore. We were all making excuses, arriving late and leaving early or getting involved in other projects. It was obvious to everyone around us what was going on and eventually we were persuaded to split by our manager after a truly suicidal gig at the Electric Ballroom in Camden late 88 when we rattled through a set that would have normally lasted an hour in 25 minutes - just to get it over with. The audience of mostly loyal fans were horrified. There was relief all round when the decision was made, but great sadness too.So there you have it: sure, there were some bad decisions made on our behalf, but our biggest problems and our ultimate downfall were all of our own making.We left Ensign almost a quarter of a million pounds in debt and thought about what we were going to do next as individuals. It was over.© Kev Hopper 2000

Myspace Layouts - Myspace Editor - Image Hosting