Jo Whiley Meets The Enemy

Radio 1's Jo Whiley and crew descended on The Enemy in Coventry and ended up at drummer Liam Watts house (well, his mums!) -because mum, Carol makes lovely tea!

Conversations soon start about The Enemy's recent tour in Japan, with Liam Watts saying he hardly ate anything while in Japan because it was "all squid and fish".
Tom Clarke: "We're just not big fish fans to be honest"
Andy Hopkins: "I found a Pizza Express in Tokyo anyway!"
Tom Clarke: "We spent most of our time there while in Japan, the menu was better than the one in England!"

Jo: "What were the gigs like you did there"
Liam Watts: "Really good, we were a bit worried cos you hear stories of Japanese crowds not going really mad, just standing there being really polite."

Tom: "It's not that case at all - they are just like the British fans, crowd surfing etc"

Jo: "Did you do a lot of shopping?"

Liam: "I did a bit, I spent quite a bit on Adidas trainers actually"

Jo: "Are you all obsessed with Adidas trainers?"
Andy: "I wouldn't wear anything else."



Liam Watts reveals that his mum buys him and his brother identical cards each time so that there are no arguments..............

Jo to Liam "Are you a tidy person?"
Liam: "Erm........"
Tom: "He's not the tidiest!"
Jo to Tom "Are you a tidy person?"
Tom: "I'm not the tidiest!"
Jo to Andy: "Are you a tidy person?"
Andy: "I'm actually alright!"
Tom: "Andy's mum does everything, Andy's mum wakes him up with a cup of tea and tidies his room. It's a disgrace!!"


Jo: "What's your memory of Glastonbury Tom?"
Tom: "As little as possible, we'd never been to Glastonbury before, let alone play at it. I was really excited and then we turned up and it was covered in mud!"
"We did two gigs, one in a small tent and the other on Sunday morning. It inspired me as we looked out and could see people up to their knees in mud and just getting rained on.You just wouldn't get that unless people love music and it's a privilege and an honour to play to people who love music."

Jo: "Have you done rehearsals around here (at Liam's) or demo's?"
Tom: "Probably listened to parts of our first demo 40 Days and 40 Nights, but generally it's just been chilling."


Jo: "What do you feel about bands reuniting or getting back together?"
Tom: "I think the big question on every one's lips is - Spice Girls - what's going on there? As sad as it is, but to be serious for a minute the Spice Girls defined the 90's as much as Oasis did. I am quite excited to see if they come back and are rubbish or come back and are quite good."

Jo: "The reviews have come back saying it went down quite good"
Tom: "I'll actually look forward to it then."

Jo: "What's your favourite Spice Girls track?"
Tom: " Probably Wannabe"

Jo: "So are you a fan of pop music?"
Tom: "I'm not generally a fan of pop music, the Spice Girls are an exception."

Jo: "What other music do you like apart from Led Zepplin and the Spice Girls?"
Tom: "I really like The Who, I love The Beatles, they are just class. I think we all love Oasis. The Verve - all their albums. I'd have loved to have gone to the reunion, but we were doing a gig."

Liam: "I don't think any of our tastes clash, we all like the same sort of stuff but I like Frank Zappa and Jazz Fusion."

Andy: "I've just got one cassette I listen to in my car - which is Blur Greatest Hits on one side and then The Clash London Calling on the other."


Jo: "Were you in any bands while at school?"
Andy: "No, I didn't play until I joined this one....... that's why I'm rubbish!"

Jo: "Ahhhh, No! So how did you get in the band?"
Andy: "Erm.... I dunno, I just told Tom I could play and he believed me!"

Jo: "What was the best gig you've played this year?"
Tom: "That's a really hard one to answer........ Reading surprised me actually. I went to Reading not really knowing what to expect. Typically the further up north you go the better the shows get, until you get to Scotland where they just go mad! But the crowd at Reading were just outstanding, they just blew me away. There are loads of really good gigs I could pick out but that one I'll single out for surprise factor."

Jo: "A lot of people are saying you've put Coventry/Birmingham on the map....."
Tom: "We had the first album to go #1 from Coventry, but it was nothing to do with us, we just wrote the songs - it was the people who went out there and bought it, they should be just as proud."

Jo: "What was it like playing a gig in a church hall recently?"
Tom: "It was amazing, it was like nothing we had ever played before, it was the most beautiful venue in the world. I didn't realise until I got there it was the same venue I'd seen Noel Gallagher from Oasis perform. The acoustics are brilliant, it's a great place to play. It was the first gig where the crowds were sat down on pews."

Jo: "What instruments can you play?"
Tom: "I can play guitar, violin and piano. I played piano when I was about four. My Nan had a piano before she had carpet, so I used to go around on a Sunday and just sort of teach myself, that's how it all started really."

Jo: "Where did the inspiration come from for "You're Not Alone"?"
Tom: "We'd been out on tour writing songs about stuff that was going on in Cov, but we'd not had the chance to see the rest of the country. We'd never been to places like Manchester or Newcastle. A band called The Paddingtons took us out on our first tour, we sort of realised what we were writing about Cov, was sort of going on everywhere in the UK. It struck a chord, that what we were writing about was a bit more wide spread."

Tom: " I don't think any of our lyrics intended to be political. We just sing about stuff that affects us and things that we see, in that sense it's social but that's as far as it goes."

Jo: "Have you met Oasis yet?"
Tom: "The lads have met Noel but I was in need of a bed for the night. It was after the NME Awards last year and I'd had a bit too much to drink."

Jo: "How was the tour with the Stereophonics?"
Tom: "Sometimes support tours can be rubbish, you can get treated like rubbish and the fans can be unreceptive but the Phonics couldn't have been any further from that to be honest. They looked after us just amazingly and I'm forever grateful for that. They put is in the next sized venues that we hadn't played in yet. Their fans are just amazing, I just never expected it. They were singing the words and wearing the shirts, especially in Scotland. I'd like to thank all their fans for making it a really wicked tour for me.

Jo: "Did you get to hang out with the band much?"
Tom: "We got to see them a bit but you don't get much time. Top guys."

Jo: "Will you be celebrating Christmas?"
Tom: "Yeah, it's only right. We were in a local pub last year (with Andy) and it go to that time of night where you think you need champagne, so we walked up to the bar and asked for two bottles of champagne. But she said she'd run out of champagne, I said "what do you mean you've run out of champagne - it's Christmas?" She said she'd got this cheap white wine but no glasses. It sounded a good idea at the time but after drinking straight from the bottle, my next memory was trying to throw a traffic cone on the Sainsbury's roof and wondering why it kept coming back down ............. it was a slanted roof so I hadn't got much of a chance. Then the next morning I woke up literally in my toilet, in just my boxers."

Jo: "Liam, have you enjoyed having us around your house?"
Liam: "Yeah, it's been pretty sound."

Jo: "Do you buy each other Christmas presents?"
Liam: "We actually don't, do we?!"
Tom: "We decided years ago we just weren't gonna do it"
Liam: " We'll just keep the money and buy each other a pint!"

Jo: "Can you remember any amazing Christmas presents as a kid?"
Andy: "A Quad bike"
Tom: "My worst present was from Mike Starkey, who I'll name and shame now. In 1998, I think , he bought me a bag of KP Salted Peanuts for Christmas! It was a big bag - but it was still a bag of peanuts for Christmas!"



The Enemy played live from Liam Watts lounge in Coventry:

1. "We'll Live And Die In These Towns"
2. "You're Not Alone"
3. "Last Christmas/Girls Just Want To Have Fun/Bleeding" (Wham/Cyndi Lauper/Leona Lewis)


*pics from BBC Radio 1 website / text typed by robmacca

My Website: "The Enemy" - Click to read the latest on The Enemy.