Rory Lewarne
RORY LEWARNE from PINK GREASE
1. Who are you?
We are Rory, Steven, John, Stu, Nick and Marc from your fantasy rock band, Pink Grease.
2. No, really, who are you?
Rory Lewarne, the lead singer, lead poseur and general whipping boy of Pink Grease.
3. What are you up to at the moment?
We’re down in the lab everyday concocting new musical potions ready to unleash on y’all in January… And also formulating our world domination
plans around our autumn live assault.
4. What three rules would make up your manifesto?
a, Don’t forget joy
b, Don’t forget anger
c, Be true to the pervert inside
5. If you were the dictator of a modern industrial country, what would
you abolish? What laws would you implement?
This is so hard, the answers are so complex because most of our problems today lie in root neuroses, the selfishness, paranoia and
miscommunication that drive our world being virtually universal. All countries are interlinked and to produce global change I think we
need some kind of paradigm shift towards empathy and trust that just isn’t gonna happen as we tumble down this mad freefall road of oil,
power and greed. The US is decaying, and like all imploding empires they’re gonna scatter their shit across the rest of the globe in a
scramble to maintain dominance. I have no optimism about the next thirty years. Keep the party going! Don’t let the fire go out!
Actually I would make clinical insanity obligatory for all politicians. At least they can amuse us by knighting
their horses and talking gibberish as they fuck our world up.
6. What are your lyrics about?
Steve writes most of our lyrics – to me they mix images of love, sex, politics and heartbreak both from life and what seems to be a
fantasy cinema in his head with classic rock ‘n’ roll gobbledegook. And I add an unpredictable, random/insane element to it, sometimes
spieling off my head like some fucking camp white non-rapping Ol’ Dirty Bastard, sometimes making like some real punk-ass version of
Iggy Pop. Loads of animal noises and rantable slogans. Really we prefer not to analyse lyrics, they’re an expression of feeling
straight from the veins, and are meant to be heard and felt, not read and studied.
7. What is your opinion on the contemporary music scene? What do you
like/dislike?
God… Peaches, the 80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster, Dizze Rascal, Ladytron, Andre 3000 (not Big Boi)… And some
Yorkshire bands like Black Wire, Robochrist and Wrongtoy. Most bands are awful though, y’know – there’s just far, far too many of them
around, all thinking they’re offering something special when really they’re just tribute acts, often to acts that maybe weren’t so
special to start with. A band like Franz Ferdinand stands out nowadays cos they’ve got such a focussed, self-sufficient vision and
ideology, but even they don’t really hit the spot for me.
8. What distinguishes you from your peers?
We have an unfocussed, wildly scattershot yet somehow glorious vision which is so bursting with possibilities and attitude we have
trouble reining it in and keeping it altogether… BUT WHEN WE DO… There is nothing like seeing six multicoloured,
multisexual, multineurotic freaks somehow get it together to offer something
which is constantly in the state of explosion! Damn straight! We talk sexy like everyone else thinks, we completely sabotage all
ideas of smug coolness by drowning it in the FEVER of the MOMENT, we take our influences from everywhere and everything and spew it out
in an authentic release of this world’s ADD tensions… We are cartoon rock
‘n’ rollers who understand the values of pop, rock, disco and soul and do our fucking damnedest to recreate that one
alchemical transcendent moment that is at the heart of every great record, that feeling of pure joy that hits you when you a hear a
T-Rex party record for the first time, touch the person of your dreams for the first time, your first sip, your first taste, your
first orgasm, the first time you hear your child’s cry… When you hear a great band, it take you back to the moment you first
encountered music, it should be that special. And even if you don’t think we quite manage to do that at least we’re trying! Pop music,
particularly British ‘alternative’ music, has been underachieving for far, far too long.
9. Where do you see yourself in five years time?
In prison, having taken the concept of guerrilla gigging too seriously and turned it into actual warfare resulting in the
massacre of a load of half-arsed indie bands.
10. Any regrets?
Yeah man, loads. Even amoral schmucks like Gengis Khan had regrets, I’m sure. But hey!