Interviewer: Sad Lovers and Giants were quite succesful in 1983, why did you split up?
Garçe: I think things came to a head in the band, we had a lot of early success, we’d done gigs in England and abroad, it became harder work to write songs and we all got on each others nerves.
Nigel: During the ‘Feeding the Flame’ era things started to hit a grey area really didn’t they? That album reflects the mood of the band at the time.
Interviewer: The mood of that LP is very down compared to Epic Garden Music.
Nigel: Yes, that’s right, there was apathy in the band and it just kind of fell apart really. I think people could see it wasn’t going anywhere.
Garçe: It was right that it did fall apart.
Interviewer: I gather you split up just before you would’ve got your first national television appearance. I’m surprised you didn’t reform.
Garçe: I think it was well that we didn’t reform because we might have been tempted to stick together for longer and I’m not sure that the music we would’ve produced would have been that good.
Interviewer: So why reform three years later?
Garçe: Because in the time that the band didn’t exist our records continued to sell, I know personally that after six months of not being in a band and not gigging I really felt I was missing out. We had in fact achieved quite a lot and it really seemed that we had started something that needed to be taken further.
Tony: We’ve been together nearly two years now haven’t we?
Garçe: The hard core of the present line up has been together for quite a while.
Interviewer: Have you found it difficult to pick up the threads and carry on where you left off?
Garçe: I think from the reaction we’ve got to the gigs we have done so far, not at all. I’ve actually been very pleasantly surprised.
Nigel: It’s strange because the gigs that we have done have felt like we only split up a week ago. The interest is still there, in fact there’s more interest.
Interviewer: Has it possibly been fuelled by the legend of not being there?
Nigel: Quite possibly.
Interviewer: I was going to ask you, there seems to have been a steady flow of records since the split so to a casual observer it would have been quite easy to believe that the band was still going.
Garçe: Yes, that has helped to blur the edges somewhat! The records you mention were of course retrospective LP's.
Interviewer: It*#8217;s inevitable that comparisons are going to be drawn between present and former band members, how do you feel about that?
Nigel: We’ve got more sex appeal than before.
Juliet: Thank you Nigel.
Nigel: Coz I’ve got sexier!
Garçe: The individual ability in the band provides us with more scope than we had before. For example, Juliet is a very accomplished keyboard player, with her ability it’s difficult to know when to stop embellishing the keyboard parts.
Interviewer: Tony’s the one that’s most on the spot, so many people used to cite the guitar playing as being one of the most positive aspects of the band.
Tony: In terms of playing the old material, I can play it as well as Tristan could. In terms of the new songs, my style is similar but I wouldn’t want people to say I sound exactly like him because that would just be a rip-off.
Interviewer: Let’s talk about some of the more interesting tracks on the new ‘Mirror Test’ LP. What about summer and smoke, how did you come to do that song which is so radically different to anything you’ve done before?
Garçe: It evolved in the studio. Juliet played a guide keyboard part that had a really good feel to it and we literally re-wrote the song around that feel.
Nigel: I think that probably with the previous line up we weren’t as adventurous as we could have been.
Interviewer: So what you’re saying is that previously the framework was much more rigid but now the barriers are down to a certain extent.
Garçe: Not completely but certainly we want to try out new ideas. We have a good understanding of our sound and we know how far we can push things within it.
Interviewer: Can you tell me what some of the lyrics on the Mirror Test are about?
Garçe: Return to Clocktower Lodge was particularly inspired by the way I feel about the band. A track on our first LP (Epic Garden Music) was called Clocktower Lodge and I felt in many ways the new LP was like going back.
Tony: It’s a glance back over your shoulder but musically it’s different altogether.
Garçe: In my mind Clocktower Lodge is a particular place, it’s where a lot of my dreams happen. It’s a sort of dreamscape place, it’s a country house with a maze and a croquet lawn, sun dial, that sort of thing.
Interviewer: What is wire lawn about?
Garçe: Wire lawn is about playing croquet at Clocktower Lodge! I’m very fond of surrealist art and the paintings of Salvador Dali in particular. The whole thing with Clocktower Lodge and Wire Lawn is that they fit in with the dreamscape idea of places and time. The timeless quality of surrealism I like and I try to create the same thing with my lyrics.
Interviewer: What do the other members of the previous line up think of what you’re doing?
Tony: We’re still in touch with Tristan Garel-Funk and Cliff Silver and I know that they are intrigued to know what we are doing.
Interviewer: And what happened to David Wood?
Garçe: I believe he’s ‘spaced out’ in Thailand at the moment.