The music business is a cruel & shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves & pimps run free, and good men die like dogs…..there’s also a negative side
Hunter S Thompson
It’s 7pm on a chilly evening in February, and two-girl, one-boy rockers Teasing LuLu are nursing their drinks on the smoking terrace of a busy Brighton pub. The question hanging in the air is how their feisty debut album came to be partly produced by Jean-Jacques Burnel, the legendary Stranglers bassist and exponent of martial arts.
“Erm, I stalked him from the age of 12,” laughs LuLus bassist Lou Carr. “I pursued that man! He’s still got all my birthday cards and letters. I did some work experience at a music magazine a few years ago, and had to interview him. He recognised me as ‘Louisa Carr from Tyne & Wear!’ We stayed in touch afterwards.”
A fan of punk since her teens, Lou moved to Brighton six years ago to go to college – and form a band. After her first (all-girl) band split, she visited Brighton’s Guitar, Amp And Keyboard shop to peruse the notice-board for potential collaborators. A message from Sussex native Lucy Dalton caught her eye.
“I emailed her and said, ‘What are you influences?’” explains Lou. “Lucy said, ‘Morcheeba,’ which wasn’t very cool. I said, ‘Who are Morcheeba?’ and told her I liked The Ramones and bubblegum pop.”
Lucy: “I wrote back and said, ‘What’s bubblegum pop?’”
Lou: “I was going through a big Monkees phase at the time. I think that was Captain Sensible’s influence…”
(Another connection: Lou had befriended Captain Sensible, who lived in Brighton, and went on to record Teasing LuLu’s early demos.)
At the time of their meeting, Lucy was being groomed as a pop starlet by a local producer. However, once Louisa had lent her a compilation tape of her favourite punk and bubblegum songs, Lucy transformed virtually overnight into an extraordinary fem-punk front-person, radiating passion and anger, injustice and hurt.
“Literally at the next practice she came in with this massive, roaring voice!” explains Lou. “It was like you’d heard some punk or rock and this voice suddenly came out.”
“It was strange,” muses Lucy, the daughter of a pioneering wildlife photographer who wouldn’t have rock music played in the house. “I had a lot of pent up anger as a kid, and so I suddenly let rip.”
Writing together, Lou and Lucy began creating the set of astonishing songs which appear on this album – in turn tender, challenging and explosive, and throughout suffused with a keen sense of melody. The lyrics document their lives: boys and dead-end jobs and 20-something angst. “People who piss us off end up in our songs,” explains Lucy. The line-up was completed in 2005 with drummer Jason Adelinia, replaced this year by Jase.
With appearances at Glastonbury and support slots with The Stranglers, The Damned and, erm, Kate Winslet’s dad (it’s a long story) under their belts, the group are set to take their debut to the world. Get prepared to be teased.
Pat Gilbert, 21st July 2008
Original interview retrieved from: http://www.steveharnett.com/teasinglulu.htm