Contraband

 

Contraband's origins date back to 1978, when they came up in Crowland, Lincolnshire. The band recorded a 2-track demo tape in 1980, being their only recording. We had a chat with Phil Whiting, vocalist and bassist and guitarist Colin Holland, to know a little bit more about this obscure band.

Q. – Hello! Tell us a little bit about your beginnings in the rock’n’roll world, who were your main influences, what led you to be a guitarist?

CH : My early influences where Jimi Hendrix , and Tony Mcphee from the Groundhogs plus Mel Galley from Trapeze. I played in a band with my brother Alan on drums with another school mate called Junkman, we did mainly Groundhogs, Bowie and T Rex stuff, did a few local gigs. Phil and I were school mates and in the same class at school, we always had a common interest in rock music and bands

PW: I played trumpet from an early age, but really started to get into rock in a big way about age 14-15. A school friend had already bought a guitar, so I bought a bass, and it all took off from there really. Early rock influences were Alice Cooper and Bowie, but once I started playing bass I was soon influenced by John Entwistle, Chris Squire, and Pete ‘Mars’ Cowling of The Pat Travers Band; and largely by Geddy Lee, Glenn Hughes and James Dewar for their bass & vocals work.

Q. – Tell us a bit about Contraband, how did it all start? Who were the first members of the band?

PW: Colin was the guitarist in a band called Junk Man soon after we left school, and I went to see them play at our old school one time and was blown away with excitement, and I knew that I just had to play with him. We had a long chat after the gig and were soon hatching plans to form what became Contraband.

Initially Contraband were a 4-piece: Colin Holland (guitar), Phil Whiting (bass, later & vocals), Colin’s brother Alan Holland (drums), and Kevin ‘Miv’ Richards (vocals)

Miv only did one or maybe a couple of gigs with the band before we became the 3-piece that was (and always will be) Contraband.

Q. – In the early days, did you start writing your own songs or were you most concentrated on covers?

PW: In the real early days we did Hendrix and Cream covers etc, but these were soon taken over by the likes of Rush, Trapeze, Pat Travers & Robin Trower who were the key influences for us as a band.

 

Q. – The first demo tape came out in 1980, how did that happen? Did it have airplay on radio stations, at that time?

CH: As Phil says, the demo was recorded with the help of the local music shop guy, and was produced by a brilliant producer/ engineer called Derick Tomkins of Beck studios in Wellingborough UK, that's why it sounds so huge!

We recorded the backing tracks pretty much live, with Phill adding the vocal afterwards

PW: We used to hang out in the music shop in our local town of Crowland. The guy who worked in there liked what we were doing and persuaded us to go and get a demo cut.

We had some airplay on local FM station Hereward Radio, and was interviewed for their rock show.

Q. – Did you try to approach a record deal after release of this demo? Did you send a tape to record companies?

PW: No, we did discuss it but somehow never got around to it. By that point we were all fully trained trades people, and we didn’t ‘know’ anyone in the music industry, and I guess at the time we couldn’t figure how we were going to find a way in and maybe lacked a little ‘belief’ in ourselves in that respect - We did have a manager for a short time, just after the recording of the demo, but he wasn’t on our wavelength and simply not part of our ‘gang’ so he was soon ousted, never to be replaced.

Q. – Are there some other Contraband recordings besides this demo?

PW: Beggars Child and Warrior King were the only ones that we had recorded in any sort of professional way. We occasionally recorded rehearsals on a couple on Unidyne B’s in our echoey rehearsal hall, and latterly on a little Fostex 4-Track, but nothing good enough to put out unfortunately. We did write and play out enough songs though to have made an album.

Q. – Did you share the stage with some other well-known bands over the years?

PW: No. There was talk of us supporting Motörhead at one of their gigs at West Runton Pavillion* one time, but it never came to fruition. (*Anyone remember that great little venue? Now long gone unfortunately, but loads of pretty well known bands played there.)

Q.- Were you part of some other musical projects besides Contraband?

CH After Contraband I took time away and had a family, my son took up the drums, and I rodied for him and his band, untill joining a band called Big Grin and playing the pub circuit locally, we recorded a 6 track cd to flog at our gigs, now I play in a blues rock band called Crowbone playing the local festivals etc

PW: Since Contraband I’ve played in and still do play, in a number of AOR/prog type covers bands; and I was part of a rock/funk originals band called Xen in the late 90’s/early 2000’s.

Q. – Have you ever thought about compiling this demo tape and maybe some other recordings on cd?

PW: No, not until we were approached recently. It never occurred that anyone would be interested! But we stand by what we did, and we did sell quite a few tape demo’s at our gigs at the time. They must be pretty rare now though, I’m not sure that even we have one!! Laughs.

 

Q.- Did you keep in touch with the other former members over the years?

PW: Yes, we’ve never lost touch, and all remain really good friends. We recently had a get together with our old roadies and had a right old laugh about the old days in the band.

Yes, we are all still in touch, the drummer Alan is my brother, and I see Phill quite a bit at the local gigs we play, very often on the same bill!

Q. – Is there a funny moment that you can share with us?

PW: Far too many to repeat here as we were generally having a riot! Laughs. But just a couple that spring to mind are:

One of our roadies Steve was heavily into pyrotechnics, and we did one show where he said “I’ve set some stuff up in front of the drum riser. When you go on, there’s going to be a flash at either end, then a red flare working towards the middle, then a bigger flash in the middle when it gets there.” We struck up our first number and ‘boom’, the whole lot went up in one massive bang and set light to the drum riser. People were running left, right & centre for fire extinguishers. Fair play to us, we kept on playing around all the mayhem, but the highlight of the show was pretty early that night!!

We had a really powerful strobe light that was actually an old WWII aircraft landing light! At rehearsal one night we were checking how it looked during Alan’s drum solo. Afterwards Colin said to Alan to come out front so that he could see how it looked, and did a little drum solo himself. Following that Alan took up Colins guitar and said “Now I’ll show you what you look like” and proceeded to go absolutely mental, leaping around all over the place and ended up breaking Col’s jack plug off inside the guitar – Col wasn’t amused!

Q. – And having you been a part of it, what do you think about all the N.W.O.B.H.M. movement, and the repercussion it had around the world?

PW: I’m not sure that we ever properly considered that we were part of the NWOBHM, but obviously we were. I guess we thought of it as part of the progression of heavy rock and metal bands through from the 70’s, as we never really identified with all of the punk movement as their attitude was completely different to ours, and they weren’t heavy enough!

Q. – In your opinion what are the main differences between the eighties and the reality of today?

PW: Technology, Technology, Technology. Today you can write and record at home to a fantastic quality that simply wasn’t available in our heyday, and you can get your music out into the world via a myriad of routes without having or needing access to the large record companies (although it obviously helps!!)

Q. – Do you keep an eye to hard rock and heavy metal music nowadays?

PW: To a certain extent. My son Sam Warren is the bass player in heavy/avant/prog bands Thumpermonkey, Guapo, The Holy Family, so most of the heavy music that I listen to is from bands in the Zeuhl type genre.

CH : Yes My eldest son Michael still plays in a couple of bands, his main band Stringfinger released an album a while ago , plus I have a vast Vinyl collection , so I am always on the lookout for interesting stuff.

Q. – How do you want to end up this interview? Anything more you want to say?

PW: Of all the bands that I’ve played in over the years, Contraband are the only one that was better than the sum of its parts.

Contraband never got ourselves a record contract, became a big band, or played outside of our Peterborough/South Lincolnshire area, but we did things our way.

We were always heavy rock fans, and saw all of the biggest heavy rock bands in the world at the time, some of them many times, and we lived and breathed it. So, when we played, whether it be a gig or the rehearsal room, we meant it, and played every single song like it was going to be our last, and our audiences loved that attitude in us.

From a very early stage, we never really played the pub circuits like most bands of our ilk. We always aimed to put on gigs like those top bands that we went to see, so for 2-3 years or more we always hired a hall (bigger and bigger over the years), hired a bar, hired some bouncers, got some other band to support us or hired a heavy rock disco, did all of the promoting and sold all of the tickets, put on a show, and played our asses off at the gigs. Obviously, all of this took organisation and effort so we only played once every few months, but we didn’t care because all of the gigs were always packed, we had a great following, and everyone had a great time. Obviously, all of this effort took its toll in the end as all we really wanted to do was play, but it was great while it lasted, and even after all of these years there aren’t too many bands who can say that they did that.

CH as Phill says, what we did years ago still resonates now, one of our tracks Beggars Child had over 600 views on youtube! We are very proud of what we did, you only get that type of band comradery once, we played all over, and had a great time, people still ask about the band now,

I played a club in Peterborough a couple of years ago now, I senced this bloke watching me all evening, after the gig he came up to me an said, " you played in Contraband didn't you? We used to come to your gigs all the time !! That was great, after all these years, still remembered