Inspiral Carpets On Tour In Australia

Cool as **** legendary Manchester band INSPIRAL CARPETS are in the country having reunited for a Greatest Hits Tour of Australia and New Zealand. An integral part of the Manchester scene along with the Stone Roses, Charlatans, Happy Mondays and James this will be their First Time in Australia since 1993 and their First Time ever in New Zealand!!!

The INSPIRAL CARPETS formed in Oldham in the late 80s and by 1990 their stunning debut album Life peaked at #2 on the UK albums chart and produced several Top 20 singles including This Is How It Feels and She Comes in the Fall. Follow up album The Beast Inside went Top 5 and featured favourites Caravan and Please Be Cruel whilst 92’s Revenge Of The Goldfish album featured indie-dancefloor bangers Dragging Me Down and Two Worlds Collide. The next album, Devil Hopping (1994), reached number 10 in the UK album chart, with Saturn 5 and I Want You (featuring Mark E Smith) as top-20 hits.

INSPIRAL CARPETS reunited in 2003, playing to sellout crowds on tour and releasing the single Come Back Tomorrow (recorded in 1995) and a number of new compilation records, most notably the Cool As box set. The band went on indefinite hiatus after the sudden death of much-loved band mate, drummer Craig Gill in 2016. Now the Carpets, (who Noel Gallagher once famously roadied for), say the “time is right” to head back on tour to celebrate their music – while paying tribute to Craig Gill. Graham Lambert talks to Hi Fi Way about the tour.

Thirty years since your last Australian tour you must be looking forward to finally being able to get back?
Absolutely. We’ve been talking about it for about ten years on and off, but it’s just a case of we are not doing shows all the time in the UK. To make it like worthwhile coming over we had to put some time aside to do at least two weeks out of our schedule over here. So, we’ve managed to find a gap where we can do it and we’re immensely looking forward to it.

Has it always been the intention to tour here or has life in general made it difficult?
Every time you do a record, you want to go to as many places as you can. When we did the last record, there was quite a big gap, and we did the last record in 2014. We would of loved to come over there, but it just didn’t stack up with the size of gigs we were being offered to do in Australia. It just didn’t stack up to make it for us to be able to come over. This time everything’s fell into place and there’s always an excuse why you can’t go somewhere. I do have really fond members of when we were last there in 1993 I think. It was a really good tour, the people loved to see us and we, that was the tour we did on our third album, Revenge Of The Goldfish. It felt like we had been perceived as a new band, which in our own minds we weren’t but as far as Australia was concerned, it was the first time we were going over there. Revenge Of The Goldfish was the first album that people over there had had got into, so we felt like a young band.

Does anything stand out that you remember when you think about the last Australian tour here?
For me being a cricket fan, Australia was in England at the time. Absolutely mauling us in ‘93, so I remember watching the cricket through the night in Australia shot from back home, Australia absolutely belted us. That’s one of my strongest memories. I remember all the gigs being good. It felt like a few of the gigs were in big rooms behind like pubs and bars. I just remember the audiences being quite mad once we went on stage like a rowdy Manchester gig back home, it’s got good memories.

Was Adelaide in the thought process for the tour this time round?
Yeah, the two week gap to come over, which obviously involves of those two weeks, four days of that are travel days in effect. We really wanted to go over to New Zealand this time because we have not been there before, so unfortunately Adelaide misses out this time. Everyone wants us to do another gig, some extra gigs, there’s people saying you’re only playing once in Auckland and why aren’t we playing in Christchurch. There’s always somebody that wants you to do an extra couple of gigs, but unfortunately Adelaide misses out this time.

Has it been fun just being able to tour the career retrospective? It must also be pretty hard to fit all the hits in the set?
Yeah, it is a nice problem to have. One of my fears in what was This Is How It Feels, which was our first hit in England in 1990, once that became a hit, the pressure was on there to get another hit single of some kind. Your worst scenario is if you have a bit of success, you become known as a one hit wonder. That’s an awful feeling being in a band and just being known for one song. So, the fact that we had in the UK we had thirty Top 40, what you might say hit singles, when you’re writing the set list, there’s always songs that you leave out. We’re only doing two songs off the last album that came out in 2014 because obviously we’re going round the world during the greatest hits. When you come across you just have do the big songs.

Have you been blown away by the interest in the tour and did you ever think that you would still be touring?
There’s been definitely times over the last eight years, Craig Gill our original drummer passed away in 2016 and for a couple of years I didn’t even touch the guitar, let alone think about playing it and getting together with the rest of the band. There has been times when we thought we’d never do it again. Times change and people change and you kind of move forward. A few emails went round this time last year and we were kicking it around about doing some gigs again. Obviously we had to replace Craig on the drums and then Martin the bass player, didn’t fancy doing it because Craig’s no longer around. We had to find two new members in effect. The essence is still there, it is still Steve singing, Clint on keyboards, me playing guitar and it’s our songs. We are just so happy to be out there playing them. It’s a great privilege, it’s fantastic.

Have you found that the release of The Complete Singles has ignited the interest in the band again?
Yeah, it went hand in hand. We were talking about another project, releasing something from our back catalogue and when these calls and emails started happening this time last year about doing some shows we felt like we should give it a go, we changed plan and said if we’re doing some shows, we might as well bring out the singles album because we knew it was on the back burner ready to go. Everything got re-cut and remastered. I was heavily involved in the artwork process because the artwork is a big thing for me. It just went hand in on that if we were going on tour this year it would be the singles. The sales, especially the vinyl of the singles album has been absolutely brilliant over here in the UK. We believe that it’s selling over there in Australia as well and we should have a few copies on the merch stall for us to sign as well, if people want a signed copy. We’ve got a load of new t-shirts we’ve had done as well.

Does the whole sort of vinyl rebirth sort of continue to amaze you?
It interesting just hearing people talking about the vinyl revival as you said. I’m a vinyl lover. I always have been. I’ve obviously got all the CDs as you do, but vinyl has never gone away from me. I’ve must have three thousand albums that I’m continually looking through and swapping, going into the attic and bringing some down having a new stuff to play. So, vinyl’s never really gone away. Our youngest daughter’s nineteen, she’s into buying vinyl of bands, which is great, but our two other daughters I think vinyl seems to have missed out their generation. They’ve never got in into it really, but our youngest is really into it. She wants a record player and she, she plays records on the family record player downstairs. Vinyl has always been there for people like me. That’s one thing about coming over to Australia and I remember looking for vinyl last time while I was there, but I’ll be on the hunt again this time for while I’m over there.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Inspiral Carpets on the following dates, tickets from Metropolis Touring…