SAL SOLO INTERVIEW
There were few people more surprised about Classix Nouveaux’s recent reunion than Classix Nouveaux themselves. At the beginning of 2023 the band had technically been inactive for nearly forty years – having broken up in 1985 after releasing three albums and 12 singles (including the UK number 11 hit ‘Is It A Dream’) – and it was generally assumed that was the last we’d ever be hearing from them. Both lead singer Sal Solo and bassist Mike Sweeney went on to become heavily involved in work with the Catholic Church, with Solo releasing material under his own name before turning to a career in youth ministry, and Sweeney releasing numerous albums of Christian music and becoming a luthier. Guitarist Gary Steadman went on to tour the US with A Flock of Seagulls and work as an instrumental tutor, whilst drummer BP Hurding found work with artists including Kim Carnes, The Hunger and the Greed, and Satellite Paradiso.
But the music industry is a strange and unpredictable place, and although it seemed to be a given that Classix Nouveaux would never be getting back together, in 2023 they deliveed a brand new Classix album – their first as a group since 1983’s Secret, which was well-received by critics but sadly did not chart in the UK. This new release is called Battle Cry (a judicious title choice on account of the album’s rock-dominated, rallying musical feel) and brings together nine new tracks alongside two remakes of ‘classic’ Classix songs.
Blitzed had the opportunity to speak to Sal Solo about the making of Battle Cry, as well as some of his experiences with Classix Nouveaux both past and present…
Looking on social media, it seems like you’ve got some very dedicated fans, particularly when you consider that Classix Nouveaux originally split up in 1985!
We do. And because of this online stuff that everybody has these days, we get to hear from the fans not only daily but sometimes almost hourly! It’s something that would never have been a possibility before, and it’s changed everything because right away they’re telling us what they like, what they’re excited about. On this new album it almost seems like every song is somebody’s favourite. That’s kind of gratifying to know, that we didn’t waste our time! But even sometimes negatives, there can be an odd comment, you know, “I don’t like the way he sings now” or something like that. One or two were saying that they think I sound like Midge Ure now, and I thought “I’ve never heard that before but I’ll take it!” He’s a good singer, one of the best really that was around.
The fans also post their memories, it’s really been eye-opening, they’ve started all these groups on Facebook, one of them was called ‘Let’s Get Classix Nouveaux Back Onstage’ which really amused us at the time! But everything about it was surprising as well, it’s strange to find that you have fans all over the globe and in many other countries we’d never been to. We toured in about 30 countries in the ‘80s so we did go to a lot of places, but there’s still further afield places that we would never have thought of. Russia is a big one, we’ve definitely seen some posts from Russia.
Did you ever think the band would get back together again?
You know, one of the fans in the last few days posted that I once said to him there would never be Classix Nouveaux again, and I’m sure I thought that at the time. Even five, ten years ago I probably would have said that. But then we saw [on the Facebook groups] people were posting gig posters, tickets from old concerts, photographs… and gradually it started to sink in that we’ve really had an impact on people’s lives. And so this is the strange thing, because when we were young, music was normally a teenage or young adult thing, and by the time people were maybe 30, it seemed like they’d moved on to something else. So, you didn’t have bands around where people were 60, or 70 or 80, so we didn’t really think too much of it by the time we got to that age, we’d moved on with our lives and we thought that was it. I moved to America in 1999 and I remember sometime after that [record label] Cherry Red asked me if I had any videos of our concerts on DVD, and I said I’d thrown them all away when I left London because I didn’t think anybody would ever be interested in them.
Am I right in thinking that your fans played a big part in the release of your new album, Battle Cry, too?
Yes, that’s really how [the album] came to be. A few years back the groups started getting really active, and it hadn’t really come to our attention before that because we weren’t really thinking about Classix Nouveaux. Anyway, one day I said to the guys, “why don’t we record something new as a surprise to the fans?”. We thought it would be like a musical birthday present. So on one of our anniversaries we did a remake of one of our old songs, and we thought that would be it. And then right away, [the fans] started saying “new material! We want new material!”. It threw us into a panic for a while.
It put the pressure on a bit, perhaps?
Well the thing was, it had been so long [since we’d recorded any material], and you can’t go back to your youth, you know? Imagine us going back to our old clothes… that’s what the music would be, putting on your old clothes again. Eventually we decided that we don’t have to do that, we could explore what we would be like if we were a band in the 2000s. What would we sound like? What kind of music would we want to make in light of the journey that we’ve made? And I think maybe that’s quite valuable because what we’re exploring is, if you were there doing that then, what can you do now having lived a full life? If we were just a band trying to reproduce what we did before it would be a bit of a waste of time because you’re only going to be a pale imitation of your youth. But if you’re doing what you could not have possibly done back then, it’s quite interesting.
This album does sound very much a forward progression for the Classix Nouveaux sound. And even though there will always be fans who do just want to hear the old stuff hashed out, there will also be those who are curious to hear what you can do now.
What I see a lot of the fans saying is that they find similarities in our stuff from before. Hearing the new stuff they would know who it is, but obviously it has a much more modern sound.
Do you think there’s been any crossover of influences in terms of your material then and your material now?
I think the influences that come out when you’re making music is everything that you’ve absorbed, and obviously we have absorbed a lot of different things in the intervening years. For instance, when we were doing our current single ‘No Do Overs’, it starts with an acoustic guitar, which was a big shock to the fans because we never did anything like that before. But the funny thing was that song actually started off as a very electronic song, and I was thinking much more of an Ultravox kind of approach, I was thinking of ‘Vienna’ or something. But when I heard the acoustic guitar it triggered a ‘Wonderwall’ [Oasis’ 1995 single] kind of vibe in my head, and I thought, “let’s take a totally different approach, strip it all back and let it build up”. Somebody said there was a bit of a Gary Numan influence in one of the songs, and when I listened back I thought, “yeah, I can hear that”. I suppose that’s one of the things we’ve absorbed that represents our era. But I think it’s hard for us to pull anything out and say this is because of so-and-so, and this is because of so-and-so.
The Numan influence is definitely there; his material has always had quite a dark edge to it which is something that also comes through on Battle Cry. Was that something you intended to happen when you recorded the album?
If it’s dark, okay… but really I think of it more like energy, and it’s the kind of thing you can only do with a rock band. When you’re in a band, first of all you tend to want to write and choose music that works for a band, you have to think about the drums and the guitars and everything. But you also have to think about what represents [the other members of the band], so you have that back and forth. When I’ve done albums on my own there’s nobody to play off. If I think it, I do it, and maybe it’s going to be good, and maybe it’s going to be awful and embarrassing a few years later! In the band the others have the freedom to put whatever they want in. Sometimes their ideas were surprising to me, sometimes they were challenging, like the fact we’ve got big orchestras on some of the songs. I probably would not have volunteered that because it’s an awful lot of work for me as a producer!
Do you think that the songwriting process and the way the band works together has changed a lot from the older days, then?
I think the first thing is that back then we didn’t really know what we were doing! Obviously I’ve written hundreds of songs since that time so I also think it’s easier for me to recognise when something’s going to be good. Writing the album I would just make a demo of an idea I had, and I wouldn’t know how [the band] were going to react. Sometimes they reacted immediately and sometimes it would take a while before they really understood what it could be. And so again with the back and forth, the nature of the songs changed somewhat. People said to me, there’s a bit of prog rock in this album. Someone said to me that [Battle Cry’s closing track] ‘Colour Me The Sky’ reminded them of that Canadian band…?
Rush?
Yes.
That makes sense. Listening to that song you don’t really know where it’s going. There’s definitely an element of progressiveness in there.
Having a whole band was good in that sense. Everybody having some input meant that sometimes things just got extended. Something might begin as a three-minute pop-rock song, and I’d hear a part and say, “that’s too good to waste, let’s feature that”, and so next thing it gets longer and longer. I think also, with regards your earlier question about our influences, I used to go to so many gigs. I saw all the hippie bands in London… Gong, Hatfield and the North, Gentle Giant. But later we came to view bands like them as the older generation, they were more prog rock so tended to be less image-conscious. Our generation was very much into the look. But the ‘80s sound, the style of singing we had…I don’t know why we sang that way at that time. That’s one of the mysteries of music that I haven’t quite been able to analyse yet.
Battle Cry is out now on Cherry Red
This interview originally appeared in issue 12: https://blitzedmag.com/product/blitzed-issue-12-pre-order-on-sale-4th-of-jan-2024/
Photos: Luigi Ciazzo