IT'S TIME FOR... FIVE THIRTY. THE TARA MILTON INTERVIEW (2018)

“Five Thirty are a blissed out, centrifuged guitar pop trio. Every song, and they’ve got more than they know what to do with, rushes at you with hot, sweaty, power.” Sounds, 1990

In Brett Anderson’s recent memoir, Coal Black Mornings, he writes how a fledging Suede attended gigs at the University of London Union to watch “now forgotten, marginal bands like Five Thirty” and “drench ourselves in the giddy world of dry ice and the squeal of feedback, the press of bodies and the thrill of noise”.  One can debate the contradiction of recalling something now forgotten, bristle at Brett’s use of marginal, but his description of Five Thirty as they exploded onto the live music scene in 1990 is on the money.

Placing them at the ULU is significant too as it was there during a Friday afternoon showcase organised by their friend Jon Leslie-Smith, a member of the student union, the band lit the fuse for a record company bidding war. Gary Crowley, then doing A&R for Island, recently said he thought all his Christmases and birthdays had come at once due to the band “sounding like a cross between The Jam and The Stones Roses”.

Island eventually lost out to East-West and during the following 18 months Tara Milton (vocals/bass), Paul Bassett (vocals/guitar) and Phil Hopper (drums/vocals) released five singles (most consider them EPs as the three or four tracks on every 12 inch were essential), an album and played a continuous string of electrifying live shows. A formidable and versatile act, blessed with two gifted songwriters in Tara and Paul, they then shot themselves in the foot by carelessly losing drummer Phil, then hobbled along for the best part of a stuttering and mostly silent year before being quietly to put to sleep. It was a strange end; a band whose star burned so brightly, fading away, almost unnoticed.

Five years before ‘Abstain’, then as The 5:30!, they were a second-tier Mod band. Young and inexperienced they played on a few Mod bills, most notably Clacton Mod Rally and the Mod-Aid Alldayer in Walthamstow and released their ‘Catcher In The Rye’ EP. Few would have predicted of all the Mod bands knocking around in ’85 it would be they who’d subsequently achieve a degree of commercial success and create a collection of recordings that still hold up today. No band has made an album I’ve listened to as often as Bed.

Only Tara Milton remained from that early Mod incarnation but it’s important to note here Tara’s schoolfriend Chris Drew, who tirelessly championed his mates from the start, sending off introductory articles to the network of often unforgiving Modzines and ran the grandly named 5:30 Information Service. Chris remained a constant in the band for the rest of his life: designing record sleeves, logos, backdrops, painting guitars and being a creative confidant.

Fast forward to 2018 and Tara Milton – baker boy cap jauntily placed, vintage Adidas, old Jam badge on his lapel – is sat opposite me in a pub down the road from the Small Faces’ former home in Pimlico talking about releasing his debut solo album, Serpentine Waltz, on Steve Marriott’s birthday. It’s a wonderful record that is quite rightly receiving across-the-board rave reviews. Cinematic, literate, disconcerting; a series of vignettes from the darkest corners of city life. After discussing the record (see piece in Shindig magazine) we turned our attention to Five Thirty.

What follows is an in-depth look at the band; grab a cuppa and a biscuit, make time for it. Enormous thanks to Tara for his patience at my probing – I can’t lie, I was borderline obsessed with Five Thirty, traipsing around the country nearly 25 times, cutting out every mention I’d find the music press – and his thoughtfulness and candidness in his replies. It sometimes felt these were memories that had lay dormant until I came poking around but it’s a story that hasn’t been told before. 

Read the interview at Modculture.

Serpentine Waltz is out now and available from taramilton.co.uk

SERPENTINE WALTZ by TARA MILTON (2018)

The debut solo album by former Five Thirty man, Tara Milton, has been a long time coming. In the early 90s his cocksure modish three-piece released the classic Brit Pop forerunner, Bed, and appeared on the cusp of making it big but internal fighting split the band in ’92.

Milton now shoulders much of the responsibility. “I just needed a good talking,” he reflects. “There was no one there to do that and I became more and more like crazy Roman Caligula.” Twenty years after disbanding second band the Nubiles, Milton returns to the fray. What took so long?

“I’ve tried to do it before but had a lot of personal problems to deal with after the Nubiles. I’d lost all my confidence, completely, and had to make some decisions about the way I was going to live. One thing I knew was that I love music and I love writing songs. If I was any kind of musician at all I would end up back in the studio doing the things I wanted to do.”

After returning to London from long spells in Japan, “teaching kids music and indoctrinating them with Five Thirty”, and with money scarce, completing the album took time. “The original intention was to do a very quick kind of record with Sean Read from Dexys, who arranges the brass and so forth. It just didn’t pan out like that at all.”

Far from a hastily knocked together record, Serpentine Waltz is lavish, thoughtful production. Some of Milton’s previous problems are meditated upon through its cinematic sweep: dreams and nightmares, twists and turns, characters and scenes blink in and out of view like ghosts. It’s a late-night journey to the dark end of the street, the other side of the tracks.

The extraordinary ‘Double Yellow (Lines 1 & 2)’ begins parodying Bob Dylan’s ‘A Simple Twist of Fate’ with “the intimacy of couple going through a separation. One of the most powerful songs Dylan did and I wanted to do a London take on it.” The sprightly tune then tumbles into a dramatic breakdown, featuring a sample of American writer Henry Miller’s passionate diatribe against the city, set to a freeform Miles Davis style accompaniment.

"Think of an album that blew you away. I felt like that the first time I read Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn. I didn’t know a writer could do that, I thought only musicians could. He lifted a twelve-month depression with two paragraphs of writing. He always wrote from the perspective of the downtrodden individual who simultaneously was on-fire, smoking.”

Serpentine Waltz’s mood is brightened by a folky fingerpicking style and richly embellished with trumpets, strings, piano, mandolins and oude. The sumptuous Beach Boy inspired chorus to ‘Getting It On With The Man In The Moon’ bursts light through the clouds.

"Song writing is still the thing, the big thing, isn’t it? But it’s got to come out of life.”

Tara Milton has seen life from all sides and lived to tell the tale. It’s great to have him back.

This article first appeared in Shindig magazine. Serpentine Waltz by Tara Milton with the Boy and Moon is out now on Boy and Moon Recordings. www.taramilton.co.uk/  Photo by Phil Miller. 

Coming soon: Tara reflects on his time in Five Thirty...

JANUARY PLAYLIST

1.  Jimmy Nolen – ‘Strollin’ With Nolen’ (1956)

James Brown later had the savvy to employ Jimmy Nolen between 1965-1970 and it’s impossible to imagine that purple patch of JB’s output without Nolen’s chickenscratch guitar style. Back in ’56 he was already cutting loose.

2.  Herbie Hancock – ‘Watermelon Man’ (1962)

Herbs radically redid it on the squillion seller Head Hunters but it’s the finger snapping original cut on debut album, Takin’ Off, that gives ‘Watermelon Man’ its classic status.

3.  J.R. Bailey – ‘Love Won’t Wear Off (As The Years Wear On)’(1968)

The title sounds like the reverse of something George Jones might have written but this is classy soul from the Cadillacs singer cut under his own name for Calla Records.

4.  Herman George – ‘What Have You Got’ (1975)

Superb mid-70s soul.

5.  Laxton’s Superb – ‘Coming Round’ (1996)

Lost in the deluge of speculative Britpop signings, Laxton’s Superb were quickly dropped once their singles didn’t hit but the bright ‘Coming Round’ deserved better.

6.  Luke Haines – ‘The Incredible String Band’ (2016)

With a gentle strum, a children’s xylophone and a kazoo solo, Haines tells the tale of the Scottish psychedelic folksters who “were an unholy act, they sang like a couple of weasels, trapped in a sack.” This perversity, and songs about caterpillars, hedgehogs, death and a dude with no head obviously appeals to an outsider such as Haines. Now featured on the four-disc set, Luke Haines Is Alive and Well and Living in Buenos Aires.

7.  The Senior Service – ‘Slingshot’ (2018)

Anyone who’s followed Graham Day over the years will be aware of his penchant for groovy soundtracks to mind-movies so ‘Slingshot’ sounds how one would expect - the Shadows and Link Wray dressed as silver clad cowboys duelling in a dusty barroom situated in outer space while a Hammond organ catches fire in the corner.

8.  Daniel Romano – ‘Anyone’s Arms’ (2018)

While most spent January easing themselves into a new year Romano released two new albums under his own name and made available another recorded under his punky Ancient Shapes title. Nerveless (electric) and Human Touch (acoustic) have already been deleted – snooze and ya lose with Romano  – so many will have missed out on beauties like this catchy country-tinged pop rocker, which in a fair world would blare from every radio in the land.

9.  The Liminanas – ‘The Gift’ (2018)

The Liminanas’ blend of rattle and reverb rocked Rough Trade East this week during an in-store gig promoting Shadow People. For the second album in succession they include a track featuring the unmistakable contribution from Peter Hook and it’s a glorious one; all low-slung, sexy pop.

10.  Tara Milton – ‘Assassins’ (2018)

Former Five Thirty (okay, and Nubiles) man returns, at long last, with Serpentine Waltz, guiding the listener to the shadowy corners of the night. If I remember my William Burroughs correctly, ‘Assassins’ is a nod to Hassan-i-Sabbah who, in the 11^th century, controlled an army of killers with drug addiction. The shuffling rhythm and spiralling trumpets one of many highlights on an impressive debut solo record.

FIVE THIRTY'S TARA MILTON BACK IN THE STUDIO. KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN FOR SERPENTINE WALTZ

Oh Tara, it’s been far, far too long. As one of the driving forces of Five Thirty, Tara Milton released Bed in 1991, an album which to this day sits firmly in my all-time top ten. (See review). In 1998, with The Nubiles, he released the uncompromising Mindblender, a record which sounds more impressive with each passing year. Since then, silence. Until now.

After years in the wilderness, Tara is back in the studio working on a brand new album, Serpentine Waltz. He says:

“It's been a long time, since I've made a record in earnest. That was never intended to be, after my last band The Nubiles split, I felt it was time for me to stand on my own two feet for a while; although as a musician and a song writer, I felt that I was only just getting started. I made a silent pact to myself, that I should return to the world, and come what may, if I were any kind of writer, then surely life would provide all of the necessary ingredients for me to furnish my songs.

Being alone and without a band for the first time since I was 15 years old, I fully expected to get lost, and that I did. In fact, it's true to say that my life skills were so far adrift, I was found floundering… But still there's a unique excitement that comes with being lost.

In March 2002 I landed in Japan, pretty much penniless, or yen less if you prefer? For about 6 weeks I was as sick as a dog. A 'girlfriend' put me up for a while. I can understand her frustration, sometimes she would chase me around her apartment with sharp implements, slashing at the Japanese shoji blinds, like a scene from The Shining. Gleefully, I was forced to consign to my perdition.

This collection of songs, Serpentine Waltz, represent to some extent me getting back on my feet over the years. I'd probably describe the songs as, 'Kitchen Sink Dramas' but with abstract twists and a late night vibe! I will generally tell my story through an emphatic third party.”

With the album approximately half-finished, Lee Rourke, who runs the amazing five-thirty.co.uk site, has helped Tara set up a Kickstarter page to raise funds to complete the project, with Little Barrie’s Barrie Cadogan and George Shilling, who mixed Bed, on board. Pledge your support now and when Serpentine Waltz is released your donation and your album (and perhaps other goodies) will wing its way to you. It doesn't take a great leap of faith to know it promises to be a special record. 

For more info, to hear work-in-progress, and details of how to get involved are available here. This project will only be funded if at least £2,500 is pledged by Friday Oct 24 2014, so get a wriggle on if you're interested. 

FIVE THIRTY - BED (EXPANDED EDITION)

This needs to begin with an admission. I, for want of a better word, was a Five Thirty groupie. From their first single for East-West in 1990 I followed them all over the south of England clocking up 24 gigs in little over eighteen months and kept every press cutting I could find. I was totally smitten. Two years later they had imploded but for that brief period they were untouchable.

Their solitary album Bed, released in the summer of ‘91, is now reissued as an expanded edition double CD containing the original album, all the tracks from their five EPs, a BBC Radio 1 session, and – pick me off the floor – six tracks recorded as demos for a never to be completed second album, Another Fresh Corpse.  

Formed in Oxford by Tara Milton (vocals/bass) and Paul Bassett (vocals/guitar), it was the addition of Phil Hooper on drums which added the missing ingredient, and from an inauspicious beginning as a teenage third-rate punky Mod band in the mid-80s, saw them explode like a supernova into the new decade as young men hot-wired with the heady adrenaline rush of Hendrix, The Who, The Jam, The Stone Roses and Pixies. From a band who in 1985 offered a disinterested audience at a Mod charity ball in Walthamstow five quid if they’d dance, to the hottest live band in the capital, their transformation was as phenomenal as it was unlikely. Their souls seemingly sold at the crossroads outside Paddington Station.    

Expanded or deluxe editions are often disappointing, padded out with filler only the dedicated fan would wish to hear more than once but Bed is stuffed to bursting with brilliance. Five Thirty never cut a bad track and the ten on the original vinyl album – as marvellous as they are – can’t be counted as their best ten songs. Throw all twenty four (ignoring the demos for the moment) into the air and whichever dozen lands first would make an album at least equal to it. The sleeve here lists some as “B-Sides”; I prefer to call them EP tracks. They’d make a superb album on their own. The only song  I ever occasionally skip is the cover of “Come Together”. Lennon and McCartney? Pah, give me Milton and Bassett any day.

Five Thirty had style and substance in abundance. They also were graced with two frontmen. The songs were usually credited to Milton/Bassett but they sang on different tracks and unlike the early Libertines to-come weren’t a two-headed beast but distinct individuals each bringing something different. To crudely divide them: Paul Bassett contributed the sharply kaleidoscopic, melodious powerpop (“Psycho Cupid”, “Strange Kind of Urgency”, “Judy Jones”; and Tara Milton brought dark, knotty, funky bass propelled art-punk (“Songs and Paintings”, “Junk Male”, “Coming Up For Air”). One thing that made them so exciting was they had such depth, they covered a lot of musical ground; they could also do reflective (“The Things That Turn You On”, “Slow Train Into The Ocean”), baggy dance (“13^th Disciple”, “Something’s Got To Give”) and they could do fucking racket (“Automatons”, “Hate Male”), yet it all worked.

I thought The Jam comparisons in the press were overplayed at the time but I’ll now concede “Abstain” and “Air Conditioned Nightmare” do have the feel of Woking’s finest and there are clear elements of the Stone Roses and Jimi Hendrix on a few tracks. The Stone Roses though never got to sound anything like as muscular as “Mistress Daydream” until they lavished a fortune recording “Love Spreads” for The Second Coming four years later.

It’s often wrote Five Thirty should’ve been massive but were ahead of their time; had they arrived a few years later during Brit-Pop they would’ve cleaned up. This is perhaps true, to a point, but does them a disservice to imply they could’ve benefitted only in the slipstream of Blur and Oasis’s success. Five Thirty did much of the spade work laying the foundations for Brit-Pop with their pop classicism, a touch of decadent glamour, Modish styling (then deeply unfashionable) and an echo of 60s yesteryear but they had enough in them to lead the charge - in any given year - not just pick up crumbs knocked from the top table. 

Manic Street Preachers were also waiting in the wings writing notes and pilfering what they could, as their first NME manifesto from August ’90 attains: “We are the scum factor of the Mondays meets the guitar overload of Five Thirty/Ride while killing Birdland with politics”. (That was me signed up on the spot). The two were frequently bracketed together (I’d notice the same people going to see both bands) but Tara was having little of it, referring to them as the Janet Street Welchers and rather memorably proclaiming “Their trousers are too tight for their fat legs”. When the bands were broadcast live to the nation on Radio 1 at the Marquee a year later in the Battle of the White Levis (okay, the Yahama Band Explosion), the Manics had little answer to Five Thirty’s powerful (expletive ridden, feedback screeching) performance, although they would – eventually – win the war. 

Their gigs were an exhilarating rush of white heat and a wall of wah-wah guitar. They never really headlined anywhere much bigger than to a few hundred people at the Marquee which created sweat drenched imitate affairs, with Tara in particular – already blessed with a face which hung in a permanent pout - never shy about stripping off his shirt. The dynamics of a band trying to contain two frontmen, alternating vocals, vying for the spotlight, is always compelling (Doherty and Barat, were you watching?) and Milton and Bassett jumped and flailed and trashed themselves and their instruments in fierce competition. In a time of motionless shoegazing and hair swinging grunge it was quite a spectacle.

That they were three good looking fellas signed to a major label and full of mouthy arrogance didn’t endear them to the indie snobs. Mind you, that decision to sign to East-West rather than Creation, was a disastrous one. When Bed finally saw the light of day how did they promote it? By asking fans to buy “You” – already on the first EP and then on the album – for a third time. It was the last thing to come out and after finally freeing themselves from the record label the band lost the will to continue.

I never foresaw longevity in a band featuring two such huge talents, with presumably egos to match, so when they did spilt it was no great surprise. And to be honest, after drummer Phil was replaced, the couple of final gigs I saw in 1992 were as disappointing and distressing as the sight of Paul wearing what appeared to be Suzi Quatro's old purple velour catsuit. Milton formed The Nubiles; Bassett, Orange Deluxe. Both had their merit but instead of getting two for the price of one, fans got half for the price of two. The chemistry lost forever.

The newly made Bed sounds far better than my very worn LP, the remastering is excellent (most noticeably on “Air Conditioned Nightmare”), and the six previously unreleased songs show how much more they had to give, they hadn’t even peaked yet. ”Apple Something”, “Barbie Ferrari” and “She’s Got It Bad” all would’ve topped previous singles with their bigger hooks, increased vocal interplay and cocksure confidence.  Listen how the bimbo-baiting “Barbie Ferrari” struts and swaggers like Steve Jones playing T.Rex riffs whilst Tara Milton preens and purrs like a frisky Mick Jagger and tell me this didn’t deserve to be blasting from every radio on every high street in every land.

I’d held back from writing about this release for a few weeks as didn’t want to rush into penning a hyperbolic review based on my initial excitement (“This is the best thing ever”, I wrote on Facebook). Were Five Thirty really as great as I thought? Do they do still stand up? An emphatic yes to both. Only brief moments like the already-too-late-for-baggy “13^th Disciple” give a date stamp (if that’s important, which I’m not sure it is) and if a band released stuff like this tomorrow I'd be all over it and so would you. Bed (Expanded Edition) isn’t an exercise in nostalgia, or a ruing of what might have been, but a testament to Five Thirty’s magnificence, whatever the time.

Bed (Deluxe Edition) by Five Thirty is released by 3Loop Music.

For everything you'll ever need to know about Five Thirty visit Lee Rourke's excellent fan site here.