Sad Lovers and Giants are a post-punk, melodic psych band originating from Watford, England. The band infuses insightful lyrics with effects-laden guitar and atmospheric keyboards. Originally signed to Midnight Music in 1982, from 1982-1991 SLAG have released 5 albums and several EP’s and singles. The last 2 releases have come out on Voight-Kampff Records. Forging their way through lineup changes and an oftentimes fickled music industry the band have never compromised their musical integrity and have stayed true to their vision. Garce, lead singer and lyricist has joined me here for this Q&A session.
First of all, thank you Garce for taking time to answer these questions.
How have you, family and friends fared through the lockdown?
My family and friends have fared well through the lockdown thank you.
Your given name is Simon. Hope you don’t mind me asking where “Garce” comes from?
When I joined the band at one point I wore a striped shirt that they thought made me look like a French waiter (lazy stereotypes were ok back then) and so I was called garçon originally which almost immediately got shortened to Garce.
Where were you born? How was your childhood?
I was born in Watford which is about 20 miles outside of London. My childhood was very settled, I was encouraged to be creative and to love literature.
Can you recall one of the first singles or albums you bought growing up?
The first album I bought when I was 13 was Deep Purple in Rock.
As a teenager what interested you besides music?
Reading and Art. I requested the complete works of Jane Austen as a present for my 18th birthday.
Who were some of the bands you liked early on?
Apart from my initial foray into Deep Purple, I was really into all the Glam rock bands, Slade, Marc Bolan, Roxy Music and of course massively David Bowie. I moved on to prog rock bands like Genesis and particularly Pink Floyd.
Was there a favorite record shop you frequented?
Strawberry Fields in Rickmansworth, which was the town I and the rest of the founding members grew up in.
How long had you known you wanted to be in a band?
Since I went to see Slade play live at Wembley when I was fifteen, they were supported by The Sensational Alex Harvey Band who were….sensational.
What was your first band?
Suspect Device, I was the guitarist, here’s a photo.
Talk about the formation of Sad Lovers and Giants. Were you friends with any prior to getting together as a band? What were each member’s influences?
Simon Blanchard (TGF) David Wood and Nigel all went to school together, incidentally my mother taught them, their band was called The Traumatics and my band, Suspect Device played a gig with them at my old school in 1980.
At that point they had a bass player called Steve Carter who went on to play in Alternative TV with Mark Perry (Sniffin Glue fanzine).
The Traumatics had recorded a demo of a song called 50:50 which was played to me by Dave Wood who I knew from drinking at the local pub. He asked me to audition as their vocalist. We still play that song as an encore 42 years after I first heard it, it was by far their best song and I wanted in.
When I became a full member I was surprised by the range of the music they listened to from artists like Frank Zappa to The Cure but the band’s music at that point didn’t reflect the depth of their musical tastes. I was listening to Joy Division and The Clash at the time.
We played several gigs as The Traumatics with me singing between December 1980 and February 1981 when we changed our name to Sad Lovers & Giants.
Now I’ve read where Tristan Garel-Funk came up with the band name. As far as you know is there any deep meaning there?
At the time there was quite a music scene in Watford and Simon Blanchard was central to it because he edited a fanzine which was ultimately called Spitfire Parade, an initial idea for the fanzine was to call it Sad Lovers & Giants which breaks down to an acronym of SLAG. To ‘slag’ someone off is to speak badly about them and so one idea was that the fanzine would exist simply to slag off all the bands in Watford. Even TGF didn’t have that many friends so the idea was shelved and resurrected when the band needed a new name.
In itself there is no deep meaning but a bit of context around the creative milieux in which we existed sheds some light. On the one hand there was a strong DIY scene with loads of bands releasing their own singles unrestrained by major record label marketing and a lot of these releases were highly creative. Rough Trade started out like that but quickly became more like a major label when it found they had signed acts like The Smiths.
On the other hand there were the dying embers of punk which still lingered, albeit in the slightly more refined form commonly known now as Post Punk.
Perhaps the coolest band from that era was Bauhaus who managed to combine all the above elements with an Art referencing name and a theatricality that hadn’t been seen since Ziggy Stardust. Our name didn’t describe a band like that although we too shared post punk credentials and the DIY ethic.
So we chose an untrendy name, why was that? Did we want to go under the radar? Quite the reverse, we wanted to be successful but always entirely on our own terms so the name we chose didn’t kowtow to the conventions of the 80’s music press, the taste makers of the day, we nailed our name to the mast as a band who did everything on our own terms, which is a luxury very few bands can ever hope to maintain.
Prior to signing with Midnight Music you released an EP and single on Last Movement. Did the single “Colourless Dream” (1982) get any attention?
We were talent scouted by a music industry manager with close links to Warner Bros. who put us in the studio to record our best material at that time which included “Things We Never Did” and “Colourless Dream”. The plan was she would then go to the Midem music industry festival to get us a deal with a major. We pulled out of the management deal before that happened but released the tracks as a single anyway.
Enter John Peel. The man who single-handedly helped launch the careers of many a band and artist. How much did the Peel session you did help with your exposure?
The single got played by John Peel on the BBC and was instrumental in us getting a Peel Session later that year.
We also got invited to play a live session in Holland (see photo below) because of the Peel session.
How did you come to sign with Midnight Music?
Midnight originally owned a record shop in north London and had heard the first two singles and the Peel session and wanted to start their own label, we were the first act they contacted to sign to the label.
We needed to record an album but didn’t have the money to do so without outside investment and we reckoned we’d get a lot of artistic freedom from Midnight so we signed with them.
Your first album released on the new label, 1982’s Epic Garden Music did make the Indie charts.
Yes, it got to number 21.
Do you remember any of your early gigs in and around the UK? Any favorites?
Following the Peel session and the release of EGM in early 1982 we signed to a major agency, J.S.E. that summer and played over sixty UK gigs in the nine months or so before we split in August 1983. Given that we all worked full time jobs and that we wrote and recorded our second album throughout that time it wasn’t surprising that we were pretty burned out in the end.
My most memorable gig was a one nighter at Preston Warehouse where I collapsed from fatigue in the Watford Gap motorway service station at 4am in the morning. I still managed to be at my desk in the bank by 9am the next morning.
Garce, do you prefer writing and recording material or playing live?
I prefer writing and recording. I’m perhaps not the most confident of people so getting up on stage in front of an audience and potentially making a fool of myself hasn’t ever been easy. However, being given the name Garce was the permission I needed to put on a mask and become a more assertive character of my own creation. Sometimes at the end of the 80’s it took a bit too much Dutch courage to enable me to pull the whole act off and I didn’t like what I had created.
Nowadays there is less dissonance between the Garce character and Simon Allard; I don’t drink before going on stage and my performances have become less erratic while at the same time the audiences have continued to grow and so I have been gradually able to hone my skills as a performer. I dare say I enjoy it from time to time now.
I hope you don’t mind I’m going to focus mainly on your Midnight releases. I’m more familiar with these albums and also for the sake of saving some time.
My initial aural experience with SLAG was in hearing “A Strange Orchard” on a local alternative radio show. I was immediately entranced with the moodiness of the song. Now I’ve always wondered about the lyrics. There is reference to Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter” featured in Alice in Wonderland. What is the song all about?
I will answer your question with some creative writing:
It’s a hot summer day in 1983 and we are laying down the backing tracks for our second as yet untitled album. It’s another marathon recording session in the remote village of Streatham, somewhere in rural Cambridgeshire. When not required, Cliff and I sneak out to the local pub for a drink.
Over the road from the pub is an ancient church surrounded by tall trees with gravestones beneath, sprouting from the ground like mushrooms from a forest floor. Rooks fly noisily from the trees and I shade my eyes from the sun with my hand to look at them. “How is your grandad?” asks Cliff, “He’s not coming out of hospital alive they say. Is he still reciting that poem, the one about cabbages and kings?” I mumble something affirmative and in my head Jefferson Airplane are playing White Rabbit which I was listening to on my Sony Walkman on the way to the studio.
I have as yet failed to write the lyrics for the last track we have recorded and I’m beginning to get writers block just thinking about it, that and wondering if anyone will listen to the album if we actually finish it. I exist in a space between dream and reality where I have no power to control my life and I can’t see that anybody will ever give us the recognition I feel we deserve as a band, and…. I feel that we are disintegrating.
Later that weekend I returned home to find my grandfather had died. I had gone to the hospital to visit him, but a kindly nurse turned me away with a slow shake of her head.
Of course the song above came from your 2nd album Feeding the Flame in 1983. This LP was almost in constant rotation on my turntable back in the day. And even now I listen to the CD/MP3 files regularly. “On Another Day” is another highlight of the album, for me. I guess you could say I’m atypical of most music fans as I have always gravitated to the slower/moodier numbers.
How did you get the photographic effect on the album cover?
It’s a reflection in a puddle.
Were you pleased with the material on Feeding the Flame? How well received was the album?
By the time the album was released we had fallen apart. Dave left first, I can’t remember why, then I left because it felt as if we had failed in our attempt to ‘make it’. Consequently I can’t remember how well the album was received although Midnight continued to plug it and the “Man of Straw” single that came from the album.
Man of Straw got played on prime time radio in the UK and apparently the BBC TV show The Oxford Road Show contacted Midnight with a view to us appearing on their show but it was too late.
I never really knew how much John Peel liked us, we never met him and I got the impression it was his producer who pushed for us to get a session, but when he died they catalogued his vast record collection and Feeding the Flame is in there. You can go on-line and look at every record together with his sleeve notes. The stand out tracks for him were “In Flux” and “On Another Day”.
Why did Garel-Funk and drummer Nigel Pollard jump ship to form the Snake Corps?
They didn’t so much jump ship as they were the last two men standing. I think they considered continuing as Sad Lovers & Giants for a while but for whatever reason they became the Snake Corps with Liam McGuinness on bass and Marc singing.
The final part of the transformation was complete when they replaced Nigel with John Greville.
What can you attribute to your popularity in Germany and The Netherlands?
For whatever reason we weren’t darlings of the music press in the UK and making any positive impression was like swimming against the tide. In other countries we have always found more acceptance.
Curiously in the late 80’s we finally got a Melody Maker feature and some good UK reviews of our fourth album but that was after we’d played some seriously big gigs in Spain and they couldn’t ignore us anymore.
I almost neglected to mention the “Man of Straw” single which I purchased around the same time as the album. Actually my “go to” track is “Cow Boys”. Intentional separation of the 2 words? This one always gets the blood going. One of my top picks.
I think the separation of the two words to create ambiguity is very perverse and typical SLAG.
Fast forward to 1987 and The Mirror Test album. New album, new lineup. How did you meet and ask Tony McGuinness (guitar), Juliet Sainsbury (keyboards) and Ian Gibson (bass) to come on board?
Tony is the brother of original Snake Corps bassist Liam McGuinness, Juliet was a friend of the owner of the rehearsal studio we used and we advertised in a local paper for a bass player and got Ian.
Now as much as I like Feeding the Flame, I think this one might be my favorite SLAG album. 3 songs in particular, really stand out for me. “Seven Kinds of Sin” is a really nicely layered song with great guitar work. “The Green Years”, like “On Another Day”, is a moody, self-reflection song. But I think the one I listen to most is “House of Clouds”. Again, great guitar work and I must say the title and music really compliment one another.
There’s a lot of attention paid to the first two albums because they fit neatly into the current idea of what early 80’s post punk was about, as a result The Mirror Test gets ignored but it’s a great album.
Recording it was a torturous process and we weren’t happy with the production but recently it was re-released by Cherry Red so Tony took the opportunity to use all available modern technology to re-mix it and The Mirror Test (Redux) was born, which I believe is nearer the album we intended it to be.
1990’s Headland album is similar in ways to the previous album, but at times a little more driving guitar like on “One Man’s Hell” and the chorus on “My Heart’s on Fire”. But both songs work. I also like the beautiful instrumental “Restless” and “Like Thieves”. “Like thieves we live our lives to please”. So true!
Prior to Midnight Music folding, the band released 1991’s Treehouse Poetry. This album has one of my all-time fave SLAG songs, “Christmas on Easter Island”. I enjoy the intro and once the song begins developing there are moments that bring out those “goose bump” feelings. And herein is another reference to “thievery” in “we must pay the price of the paradise we stole together”.
Now I don’t want to completely forget your most recent releases on Voight-Kampff. The title track off Melting in the Fullness of Time is gorgeous.
I think your latest, 2018’s Mission Creep, harkens back to the old SLAG sound, only better production and more layered. A solid album. By the way, is the cover photograph of a WWI trench?
Yes, and here’s a photograph of us in a genuine WW1 trench in Belgium on 11th November 2018, the day after we played The Milky Way club in Amsterdam.
Briefly, I’m partial to Cranes, Beauty Is Truth, Uncharted Islands, Failed Love Song and Loneliness.
Backing up a bit to 2016 and the South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas. What are your memories of playing there? The reason I ask is I almost went, being from Texas myself.
The US tour was a massive adventure, everybody said we could never do it because it would cost too much and we weren’t big enough, I made it my personal life’s mission to prove the nay sayers wrong.
We funded it through merch sales and a pledge campaign which raised £7,000 and was based around the release of the Copacetic single which featured an LA radio session for the legendary DJ Michael Stock.
Getting the US visa was the biggest hurdle and involved hiring a specialist New York Lawyer to present our case which was rejected at first. We re-submitted it with a testimonial from Peter Hook (Joy Division) and it succeeded. I now have a piece of paper from Homeland Security attesting that I am an internationally recognised performing artist.
We got the showcase at SXSW through Michael Stock and his Part Time Punks radio show.
The day after we played SXSW the Austin Chronicle published a review of our showcase with a photo which considering the number of bands they could have chosen to review seemed important to me.
Any future plans to tour the States again, particularly Texas?
We were in talks to do a festival in Oakland and to revisit the Echoplex in LA and then COVID struck.
I love Texans, many of them have an innate charm. When Scottie Scheffler won the US Masters everybody said how composed and level headed he was but I just thought he was like a lot of charming Texans I’ve met.
I have to bring up the 2 Cherry Red compilation releases. Have you noticed an increased awareness of SLAG and perhaps a new(er) fan base as a result of these?
Last weekend we played a London gig to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Epic Garden Music which we played as a first set before doing a full blown set from our entire back catalogue. It was a magical night, we were on fire and gave one of the best performances of our career. But what fascinated me was the age of the audience; they weren’t old blokes in anoraks, although some were, they were young student types, a significant number were female and there were fans from all over the world.
The new Netflix series, The Andy Warhol Diaries features our track “Colourless Dream” in the second episode and I’m beginning to think we might be about to be discovered as a lost 80’s gem (again!!)
Garce, on a composition level, how do you write? Where do you draw your inspiration?
I will talk about my lyric writing rather than the music I write, which largely comes out in a rough form like the demo of Beauty is Truth and then gets knocked into shape by the band.
I usually already have the backing track which Tony has recorded from one of his ideas so I first write a rudimentary melody with nonsense words just to shape out the song. Then I start with a title from my collection of titles that I jot down as they come to me.
I will then branch out from the title to explore what might be the idea behind the song, and as words come to me I adjust the phrasing and melody as I go until I have a complete song idea which I record at home and send to the band.
We then work on the song together in rehearsal and refine it and re-record it, possibly even take it on the road before the final recording that gets released. It can take years from inception to release. We have enough songs now for another album that are all at some point in this process.
Any immediate or future plans for yourself and/or Sad Lovers and Giants?
We’ve just done some gigs in Italy which are the first since Brexit and COVID so we’ve proven that it’s still possible for UK acts to play in some countries in Europe. In May we return to Athens for three nights at a venue where we pulled 700 the last time we played there.
Then we take a break for the rest of the year to finish writing and recording the next album.
Lastly, talk about your family and any interests outside of music.
I am lucky to have been supported throughout my music career by my wife who even broke off our honeymoon to travel from Cornwall to Cambridgeshire with me to record part of Epic Garden Music.
Outside of music I am a keen artist and have recently gained an upper second class degree in Creative Arts so I am a Bachelor of Arts with honours. I make artists books, static objects and short films exploring personal identity.
Garce, thanks so much for your time and for sharing. Best of luck always.
Thanks Greg, your questions were well-informed and I enjoyed answering them.
Tending The Pale Bloom 