Interviews

Interview: Buster Bloodvessel

It’s Bad Manners 2007 Christmas Tour and instead of being festooned with festive decorations their dressing-room looks like a bomb has hit it. There are monkey nuts all over the floor, scattered beer cans have been left half-empty, and the band are slumped in various states of disarray. Buster Bloodvessel, the band’s iconic frontman, is one of the aforementioned. He’s sweating profusely having just entertained a packed house of fans heady for a taste of that good old ska sound and is being loomed over by well-wishers. He’s lapping up the praise but is looking for a chance to nip outside for a fag - a glimmer of an opening and he’s off displaying a surprising fleetness of foot.

When Sonic Dice finally pin him down again, showered and sporting his big biker jacket, he’s keen to impress just how easy a decision it is to keep touring after thirty long years. “I still love it just as much, y’know? How could you get tired of having the best job in the world? I really think I have. It’s a very fortunate position to be in, going round the world making people happy”, he says with a beaming smile.

In all those thirty years he’s never considered changing the band’s style - his devotion to ska music is utterly admirable. “We’re basically a party band that has always played ska. We’re not the same as any ska band that has formed before or after us. Lots of bands have taken things from Bad Manners and made them their own and made a good name out of it, but we’ve just played our own way, all the way, which is a mixture of R&B, ska, and a bit of punk, but also a bit of Bad Manners, whatever that is ‘cos that’s a hard element to define, but it’s something that’s a bit different from all the other bands and we’re proud of that”.

Buster even started his own festival, Badfest, last year featuring mod, ska and punk music. It was hard work but he plans on making it even bigger. “I intend to continue and I intend to one day have the best festival the world has ever seen. That’s an ambition that’s been burning for a long time and it just gets worse with each year. I just want to do a bigger and better festival yet I always come across problems because of the nature of the music. People have the worst fear about punk and ska being put together but I find that it’s still the best crowd I’ve ever seen”. He confesses that it’s that crowd reaction to the music that keeps him coming back for more but he’s eager to teach that you get out what you put in. “The importance of live music, for me, is to entertain. If you’re up there playing music and hoping to get respect I don’t think you’ve got a chance in Hell. I love bands that put something into it that make people move and not just stand there like lemons. I’d never leave people standing there like that. Sometimes it is hard work but I can’t just leave a place until I’m certain the audience will leave with a smile on their face having had a bit of a dance”.

It seems that if you want to start tapping into that feel-good feedback like Bad Manners did all those years ago then ska is the place to kick-off then. “On our third tour of America, No Doubt were our support act in the California area. For me, I could just see there was something good about what they were doing. I never thought they’d get to such heights. It was actually the death of their male vocalist which spurred [Gwen Stefani] on to be a little bit different; not just being a band that supported Bad Manners but to being a worldwide number one hit. I take my hat off to her. She looked at the market and built her success on the ska crowd”.

He grins widely allowing a glimpse of his larger-than-life persona. Never one to shun the spotlight his antics have landed him in hot water more times than he cares to remember but he never was one to apologise. After all it’s just who he is. Bad Manners were banned from Top Of The Pops because he painted his head red. “I wanted to be a spot!” Unfortunately, the combination of studio lighting and cameras made it disappear when it was broadcast live and they were sacked on the spot taking the make-up lady down with them. They were also banned from Italian TV when Buster mooned the cameras and, by chance, the Pope who was watching. “Barry White was on after me and I wasn’t having him being bigger and fatter than me so I showed them my arse. I walked off stage and the record company weren’t happy. Some were in tears, some were going mental and some of them were, like, “You don’t know what you’ve just done - the Papa is watching”. It got quite interesting after that!” he laughs. Those bad manners of his began at an early age. The band’s very first gig was in aid of deprived children. “We were the deprived children of Hackney, well, deprived musicians of Hackney”, explains Buster, “We got more money than we were getting for the gig anyway. Fish n’ chips on the way home! You have to pull a few stunts when you’re starving musicians to make your way through”. With this he lets out a great dirty, mischievous laugh which is utterly infectious.

With his huge persona he’s never shied from the camera and revels in its all-consuming gaze. When sponsoring Margate F.C. for a season he hit the headlines. You’d think he’d be a fan but it doesn’t appear to be the case. “I would be but the company that we made a lot of money for didn’t like us which was really strange. They thought we were in it for the publicity but we got them huge amounts of publicity. Like the time I tongued Kevin Keegan in his ear, the next day 78 newspapers had a picture of it in. You can’t buy publicity like that!” He has some crazy plans for the future too. It seems following the success of his former restaurant chain, Fatty Towers, catering for the larger customer, he’s keen to return to the business. “I want a fuck-off big ship that can hold 500 people and I want to go to sea with it. We’ll party all night long and I want people to let their hair down and drink and eat too much and have a fantastic time on The Blood Vessel”. So where does this love of boats come from? It’s simple, he lives on one.

This great eccentric is a treasure of ours. At gigs is where he’s most alive, slapping his head and his stomach, smiling widely at those who he deems worthy. Over the years he’s been called a fat bastard in over 100 different languages but he revels in the chance to answer back by sticking out that almighty tongue of his. “It’s been measured, stretched, from the back of the throat to the tip and they reckon it’s about 13 inches. Whether that’s true or not I don’t know, but there you go”. It seems Buster could be the Gene Simmons of ska, then. “Well, I think he’s got a really long tongue but he can’t do much with it. He can’t do tricks!” Buster laughs heartily, gives a cheeky wink and heads off for a well-earned rest.

Tags: Interview, Bad Manners, Ska, Buster Bloodvessel

Photos courtesy of Louise Clarke.

This review originally appeared in Music-Zine.

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