Interview with The Bluetones – Mark Morriss Speaks to Stereoboard About The Farewell Tour
Thursday, 19 May 2011
Written by Rob Sleigh
After 18 years, six albums and numerous hit singles, Britpop survivors The Bluetones have sadly decided to call it a day with the recent announcement of a farewell tour this September. Following the news, Stereoboard caught up with frontman Mark Morriss to find out more about the history of the band and why they chose to wrap things up now.
“You reach a point in your life where you sort of think ‘I want to do something else’,” says Mark. “We collectively came to that decision last December. We’re not getting any younger and this gives us a chance to diversify a little bit. We’ve had a good ride. It was just a case of ‘let’s go out with a hurrah rather than a whimper’ and see what else is around the corner for us, individually.”
Unlike many of the groups that emerged from the mid-90s Britpop era – some of whom are currently making a slight return of their own – The Bluetones were determined not to fade out as that particular genre began to expire. After their chart-topping debut ‘Expecting to Fly’, the band continued to make music right up until last year’s ‘A New Athens’, free from any kind of hiatus or catastrophic squabbling along the way. However, despite the continued critical acclaim for each of their six albums, the commercial success of their more recent releases never quite lived up to that of the band’s earlier work. “It’s always disappointing when that happens,” admits Mark. “You make a record and you have such high hopes for it. Then, when it doesn’t catch on in the way that you’d hoped, it can be a bit of a knock-back. I think that’s one of the reasons that now feels like the right time [to call it a day]. It’s very difficult to be resilient the whole time. We don’t want to become bitter and resentful. We’d rather just leave a good legacy and let someone else worry about sales.”
Mark formed The Bluetones in Hounslow in 1993 along with his brother Scott, guitarist Adam Devlin and drummer Eds Chesters. Unlike another well-known group to come out of the ‘90s indie scene, who also happened to feature two brothers, The Bluetones have always managed to avoid any high-profile fall-outs and the same four friends still make up the band to this day. Mark explains the secret of the group’s success: “We’ve been fortunate in the fact that the right four people got together in the first place. Our friendships have always been very strong and, even now, it’s not the case that differences in the band have forced our hand or made us make this decision. We shared a musical vision right at the very beginning that we’ve maintained the whole way through. We’ve always had a strong sense of identity that’s stayed with us.”
Mark goes on to describe how, thanks to this shared ambition, The Bluetones have been able to make the most of the past 18 years. “We’ve had a lot of fun. It’s just been surreal - the fact that we pursued this and made a career out of it. It was something that we dreamed of doing in our teenage years and we’ve managed to see it through.” He fondly lists a few of his best memories from his time with the band, including the year that they headlined the Other Stage at Glastonbury and when they did their first tour of Japan. “This thing that was our hobby had suddenly brought us to the other side of the world. There you are, flying through the clouds, and you see the Japanese coastline appear. Where did things start to go right? Here you are with your mates and you’re flying out to play for an audience that’s bought tickets to see you on the other side of the planet. It was quite emotional.”
After their first few gigs, the band had some early success in 1995 with the singles ‘Bluetonic’ and ‘Are You Blue or Are You Blind?’, both of which found their way into the Top 40. However, it was a re-release of their debut 7” ‘Slight Return’ that first launched them into the realms of Britpop stardom. However, Mark explains how the B-word hasn’t always been a welcome term for the band: “It’s a double-edged sword, isn’t it? Obviously, it was a very big and popular musical movement, but at the same time, I think it’s been quite restrictive for us in many ways. As soon as you say the word, I think people have an idea of what it’s going to sound like before they hear it. We’ve never considered ourselves to be anything other than just a pop band, but as soon as you say ‘Britpop’ it becomes something else.”
After the success of ‘Slight Return’, The Bluetones released their first album ‘Expecting to Fly’, which went straight into the UK Albums Chart at Number 1, even knocking ‘(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?’ from the top spot – albeit briefly. For the next few years, they continued to maintain their initial popularity and even earned themselves a few more Top 10 hits with the singles ‘Cut Some Rug’, ‘Solomon Bites the Worm’ and ‘Marblehead Johnson’. The latter track was actually a clever reference to the outspoken and often controversial US comedian Bill Hicks, who had passed away a couple of years before the single’s release. Mark confesses that it wasn’t just an accident that the song happened to have the same name as Hicks’s occasional music project: “No, it’s not a coincidence. We were big fans of his work. In the early days, he was quite an inspiration to us and for a lot of people of our generation. He was one of the first political comedians, I suppose, and he certainly opened our eyes. It was a little, subtle tribute to Bill.”
As the ‘90s started drawing to a close and Britpop began its decline into obscurity, The Bluetones’ music continued to attract attention and their debut’s two successors ‘Return to the Last Chance Saloon’ and 2000’s ‘Science & Nature’ both gained the group further Top 10 albums. However, while some of the other bands associated with Britpop chose to distance themselves from the failing genre, The Bluetones refused to let any such overreaction affect their music. Mark explains how they opted instead to let their sound develop naturally: “You’re always looking to try and progress within your own little world, rather cocooned from what else is going on. We certainly never tried to maintain our sound. That’s just something that we had. Everybody has their own sound – it’s a blessing and a curse. I think we made music that reflected the stuff we were inspired by at any given moment.”
While The Bluetones’ later albums still managed to earn the band a great deal of positive reviews, it was at this point that their commercial popularity started to wane slightly, failing to mirror the success that they had seen earlier in their career. This culminated with last year’s release of their much-praised sixth album ‘A New Athens’, which fell short of the UK Albums Chart altogether. However, Mark reveals that, at the time of its making, the band had no idea that ‘A New Athens’ was to be the final Bluetones album: “We thought: ‘this is going to be The One’ [Laughs], but it wasn’t to be. You can’t read into the record like that or hear that the band are winding down. We had no idea that we were going to come to this decision at that time.”
So what’s next for the four Bluetones? Mark has a few plans up his sleeve, including the possibility of a return to his solo work. His last lone outing was on his first album ‘Memory Muscle’ in 2008 on which he worked with, among others, film composer David Arnold. “It was a totally different experience, in that I was in charge. In The Bluetones, it’s very much a democracy and it always has been. I just enjoyed the fact that I was working with different people. Not that there was any problem with the band, it was just a new challenge. It was nice to collaborate with different artists. The Bluetones is like a comfortable pair of slippers and it was time to try something new.” He also reveals a number of other projects he hopes to work on in the future: “I’d like to try and do more collaborations and work with other people in a writing capacity, so we’ll see what happens. I’ve been working with some new artists and I’d like to continue doing that, I think. I found it very enjoyable and very rewarding.”
With the farewell tour approaching, we asked Mark what people can expect from the forthcoming shows. “Often, when we go on tour, we like to play more of the newer stuff because it’s more rewarding for us. But because it’s the last one, it’s going to be a real set of crowd pleasers. There’s going to be a bit of something for everyone.”
Looking back over the past 18 years, which have seen The Bluetones touring almost relentlessly, Mark admits that it’s the part of being in a band they will probably miss the most: “ The touring’s always good fun. The fact that we’re all good friends means that it was always something that we looked forward to. It’s like a mini holiday – a holiday from reality. It’s going to be really odd, being out on the road, knowing that we might be visiting places for the last time. Being on the road is where you really get the juice. It’s where you really get the feedback from the people who listen to your music. When you put an album out, people are listening to it at home and you can’t see or experience it. Being out on the road, it’s much more cathartic. We’ve always enjoyed playing live. That’s where it’s at for us.”
The Bluetones Farewell Tour – September 2011
Yeovil Orange Box (3)
Cardiff Millennium Music Hall (5)
Reading Sub89 (6)
Brighton Concorde 2 (7)
Southampton The Brook (8)
Manchester Club Academy (10)
Glasgow O2 ABC (11)
Newcastle O2 Academy (12)
Sheffield O2 Academy 2 (13)
Liverpool O2 Academy 2 (15)
London O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire (16)
Leeds Cockpit (17)
Bournemouth O2 Academy (18)
Oxford O2 Academy 2 (20)
Bristol O2 Academy (21)
Birmingham O2 Academy 2 (22)
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After their first few gigs, the band had some early success in 1995 with the singles ‘Bluetonic’ and ‘Are You Blue or Are You Blind?’, both of which found their way into the Top 40. However, it was a re-release of their debut 7” ‘Slight Return’ that first launched them into the realms of Britpop stardom. However, Mark explains how the B-word hasn’t always been a welcome term for the band: “It’s a double-edged sword, isn’t it? Obviously, it was a very big and popular musical movement, but at the same time, I think it’s been quite restrictive for us in many ways. As soon as you say the word, I think people have an idea of what it’s going to sound like before they hear it. We’ve never considered ourselves to be anything other than just a pop band, but as soon as you say ‘Britpop’ it becomes something else.” 
