I was first introduced to the U.K. Subs back in the early 1980s when my friend had a "borrowed" copy of their first album Another Kind of Blues from the local library. The band immediately transfixed me. I proceeded to buy everything I could find by them. Each album is great in its own way, but always high energy music that resides in a powerful punk ethic. I have continued throughout the years to buy each new release and see them every time they play in the Northwest. To this day, the U.K. Subs take up the most items by a single band in my record collection: I have somewhere around 150 items by them.

After the U.K. Subs' best lineup parted ways in 1984, Charlie kept the band together in one form or another, recruiting longtime friends and fans alike to continue along the path to attain his goal. The U.K. Subs have had two reunions with the stellar early lineup--the last reunion is still intact today, save the drummer. Along with this second reunion has come a rebirth of the band. The first two albums from this reunion have and do stand up against the first five albums in that crafty musicianship and delivery.

Can you give me a little background information on Charlie Harper before he joined the U.K. Subs? Say, from 1966-1976?

Charlie Harper: I was in an R&B band just playing bars. Playing with bands like Eddie and the Hotrods and Dr. Feelgood. We were The Subs in 1976 and we became the U.K. Subs in 1977. Before this we were the Marauders, basically an R&B band. A revved-up R&B band.

Did you release any material?

Charlie: No, no, only live gigs. For some time we were in a band called Formula One. We had two live shows and were together about two years. Another band called the Marauders from 1974-1975; this was a solid Iggy [Pop] band.

Were any of the members of the first U.K. Subs lineup in these bands?

Charlie: Yes, it kinda crossed over to The Subs, not the U.K. Subs.

Who were the members of The Subs?

Charlie: A guy called Richard Anderson, a guitarist, who kinda sounded like Keith Richards. He was really great. He co-wrote songs like "Stranglehold," "C.I.D.," and other early songs.

How did the U.K. Subs' first lineup come together and what were some of the highlights of this lineup?

Charlie: I always wanted to take my band down to the Roxy Club. There is something really brilliant going on there, nothing that you ever heard before. I was already 30 years old and my band was just teenagers. These guys both had college or work in the morning and never came down to the club for a really long time. When they did come down, The Damned were already established. This one night the band was really taken aback by these bands and asked if I wanted to form a punk band. I said you go ahead I'm an old blues man, I'm a bit old for that. I like seeing the shows, but I'm a bit too old to play that stuff. It's a bit to fast for me.

Who is in the lineup tonight?

Charlie: A guy called Pumpy on drums that you probably saw last with Vice Squad. He was over here with Vice Squad last year, Nicky Garratt on guitar and Alvin Gibbs on bass.

Can you play the song "New Order"?

Charlie: [Tries to hum the song] No.

No, why not?

Nicky Garratt: Only I remember it. I got probably 160 songs that I have written with Charlie and it is hard to keep them all in memory.

When did you come up with the idea to release an album with a title for every letter of the alphabet?

Charlie: It was from the beginning.

Nicky: When Charlie came up with Another Kind of Blues, well this is an "A" maybe our next one should start with a "B."

Can you shed some light on the breakup of the original lineup?

Nicky: You'll get two different stories about this. There were a lot of circumstances going on.

Charlie: Like all kinds of thing going on and many combinations of things.

You were doing 200-250 shows a year, so were you a little sick of each other?

Charlie and Nicky: Yeah.

Charlie: I think a lot of bands start growing up as a band and each member has a different agenda.

Nicky: I think one of the things was that Charlie's emphasis was always on live music. Not that he didn't care about the records. His emphasis has always been on the live music first. I think Alvin and I wanted to take a step back and look at what we were doing and what we had recorded. To see what the differences were and where we should go from here. I think, basically that was it. We had been doing some heavy touring. We had a huge American tour back-to-back with a Polish tour. Back behind the Iron Curtain. I think it seemed like a stalled time.

Charlie: I thought, "It's time to call it a day." I didn't have any plans to do anything, but a week later someone called up and asked if we could do this benefit for children with cancer. I called Steve Slack, the original bassist, I called Captain Sensible, a friend of mine who was a big fan of ours since he was 15 years old, he knew the songs, and another friend on drums. We just got together to do this benefit and called ourselves the U.K. Subs. This record company just happened to be down there and asked if we could do a record. I had no intention of going on anymore. It was kinda like the beginning of the U.K. Subs. You know, kinda by chance that we formed. Then again it was by chance someone called us up to do a benefit and then have someone wanting us to do a record for them.

Nicky: We have always been an anomaly anyway. At that time in the early 1980s, of all the other punk bands that started the same time as us or a little before us--the 1976 bands--we were the only ones who still sounded like a punk rock band. There were maybe a couple of others, but The Clash changed and the Sex Pistols broke up. With the whole second wave and the U.K. Subs really joined the first wave...

Did the hardcore crowd at that time like your music?

Nicky: The hardcore crowd migrated from bands like The Clash and the Sex Pistols. Those types of bands migrated towards us and we became the focal point of the bands that were still considered punk. We became the focal point for that in the early '80s. With this came a kind of frustration and almost like a responsibility. We would sell out the Lyceum, which holds 3,000 people. It was a really crazy time. On the one hand we were at our height in popularity and on the other hand we did not have a licensing deal or a management that worked. Our American management was falling apart. It was a real dichotomy and we felt pressure from all of this. Also, the massive tours and such. It was really a unique position to have survived the first and second wave of punk.

Charlie: We were all good friends and we always wanted to get together to do something again.

This really didn't work out that well for some reason?

Nicky: The reason why it didn't work out was because it was only meant to be one record.

Charlie: That's it--it was meant to be was a one-off record. It wasn't meant to be a reformation.

Nicky: No, no, absolutely not. I was in the middle of running my own label [New Red Archives]. Alvin was in the Iggy Pop band.

Charlie: We got Alvin in New York for only two days.

Nicky: We thought we could get Alvin for six or seven days and it turned out that Iggy called him up and he only had three days before he had to start a tour. The schedule was all screwed up. I actually played bass on a few songs. Charlie also had to get back to England and I ended up singing a couple of songs, which was a really big mistake.

Charlie: No, I didn't think so. I think you have a great style.

Nicky: Charlie is very kind to me. I don't like the sound of my own voice.

Charlie: I don't like the sound of my own voice either.

Nicky: Charlie is the lead singer, I'm not a lead singer. Anyway, the conception of the album was to have this reunion together and have some fun. The reality of it was very stressful. Alvin brought in Andy McCoy of Hanoi Rocks because he was on the tour with him. To bring him in to be a guest guitar player, but really he was a heroin addict and it complicated things. The drummer was into it.

Charlie: The drummer played alright, he was really into it.

Nicky: All these things and extra people in the studio at the time, logistically it was very difficult. Now for the second reunion, Riot and Quintessentials, conceptually was very ill-conceived, but it happened to go smoothly. It was a great time. The songs just flowed out of it. We did 33 songs in three weeks.

Charlie: Even when we were rehearsing together, we just went into the rehearsal room and it was like we had never been apart all those years.

Nicky: That's right, I'm just as proud of Riot and Quintessentials as I am of the first albums.

They hold up well against the first several albums?

Charlie and Nicky: Yes.

Nicky: You can really hear we were having fun and it really was. Apart from maybe the last three or four songs. When we were really saturated. They were hard to pull off.

Charlie: We thought we would do a song in which the drummer was involved. "Look, just lay down your favorite beat and we'll write around it." His favorite beat was really odd.

Craig Young: Which song was that?

Nicky: It's on Riot, I can't remember.

Charlie: No, no, Alvin's playing rhythm guitar.

Nicky: I just do a little lead on it.

Charlie: Yes, yes. How come Riot wasn't on LP?

Nicky: Cleopatra had the rights to Riot and my label had the rights to Quintessentials. We both did our own licensing deal in Europe. The licensing deal I did was when Charlie played on Jungle Records. He has a relationship with them. The licensing deal in the U.K. was with Cherry Red Records. They decided not to put out both albums. I'm sure Jungle [Records] lost money by putting the album out.

Craig: Who was the bass player you had playing with you here two years ago?

Nicky: That was the T-shirt girl. Alvin got very, very sick. Something called an autoimmune disease. Where the immune system attacks itself. It got to the point that Alvin could not even chew or swallow his food. He was on intravenous drips. He left initially not because he was sick, but because of a court case. You're in the middle of the tour and he's gone. It was totally disappointing, but the girl who sold T-shirts said she was a bass player and knew all the songs. I really don't like doing that. I don't like playing without the real lineup, but we could ill afford to cancel because we laid out money for the tour.

Nicky, are you actively writing material for the U.K. Subs right now?

Nicky: Actually, we have done an album of re-records of the most popular s ongs. We did a selection of B-sides from singles and the first five albums.

Will this be on your label, New Red Archives?

Nicky: No, it will be on Cleopatra. It is called Timewarp, it's all re-recorded.

Nicky: Probably early next year, February.

Charlie: Oh really, I thought it was going to come out while we were touring here.

Nicky: Then there is an EP on a French label, which is new stuff. It is halfway between a re-release and a demo. We are trying out some new stuff.

What is the title of this?

Charlie: Reclaim the Streets.

Nicky: No, Revolution's Here.

[Nicky and Charlie try to figure out the title for the EP]

Craig: Have you got the rest of the album titles figured out?

Nicky: No, not really. I think the new one should be called U.K. Subs. I t hink it would be hilarious, our 21st album.

[Nicky and Charlie go into a round of disagreeing on this one, too.]

Nicky: We really want to make a special studio album for the next album. We are really intent on making it. Charlie says the next two years or two studio albums have to be special.

What would Charlie be doing if he wasn't doing music and touring?

Charlie: Um, I would be catching sea bass and selling them to posh restaurants.

What is your feeling on the EU?

Charlie: Well, quite mixed really because I'm one of those people who could never get a job if I stayed in England. I'm kinda forced out of my own country to work. Like an immigrant worker, you know...migrant worker. Germany, Holland and several other countries have been very very good to me. I can't afford a common market. It's a little like the rest of the countries with reservation about it. Obviously it leads to a kinda, it embraces the New Order. Whenever you get something new, like the 'Net or a website, there's always going to be a flip side to it. There's going to be a great side to it, like it's changing the world as we speak, but like life it is a paradox. There is always going to be a bad or good side no matter what it is.

Nicky: I thought you said life is like a pair of socks. All this time you have been leading me astray.

[Laughs all around]

What will it take for the EU to work?

Charlie: Fair play. I mean, any kind off regime or whatever you want to call it that has a pyramid effect from the top down. All the richest are at the top and the people who are getting bread are on the bottom. It's sad in a way as you can see. I don't know if you were aware of this, but England almost went on strike because of the petrol crisis. Where the cost went up so high that people could not afford to work. If you were in England and paid the amount for petrol, you wouldn't believe it. It has such a stranglehold on every kind of industry. The farmers, the people who deliver the petrol and others went on strike.

All this brought the national conscientiousness to a standstill. The government said you can't do this. You can't hold this for ransom. The government was not sympathetic, the government has so much tax on petrol and energy and they have so much money, but they don't give it back to the people. It's the people's money. The government is very unsympathetic.

What do you think of the state and quality of music coming out nowadays?

Charlie: There is always going to be a lot of commercial emphasis and music made just for the buck. I don't hear that good of quality of music these days.

How did the Chaos Tour go last year?

Nicky: I loved it and had a great time.

Charlie: We had a great time.

Craig: What are you going to do after album "Z"?

How many kids do you have?

Charlie: I have two and a bit.

Do you have any grandkids?

Charlie: Yes, I have two. They are kinda reincarnations of my kids. It's kinda weird, their ages are spaced apart like my kids. The children are eight months apart and the grandchildren are about nine months apart.

Craig: Did your kids grow up to be like you?

Charlie: No, and my grandkids are going to be a real heavy shock to [their parents]. The grandkids are going to be more like me than my kids were.

Nicky: Your kids have gone through little phases where they had dyed hair.

Charlie: Well, when they were ten-twelve years old, because Animal from Anti-Nowhere League was a good mate and he came around the house a lot a nd had colored hair. Beki Bondage (Vice Squad) was a good friend who came around and Captain Sensible (The Damned) came around. It's funny: Everybody who came around the house was a cricket nut and all these people just loved my kids. The kids have all the albums. Their mother was a bit of a Clash fan. They went through things. One became a rave DJ, but he has got over it now and gone back to work.