Who remembers Swell Maps? They were a long-running collective of fairly posh people with made-up names - like Nikki Sudden and his brother Epic Soundtracks - who’d been part of the DIY scene for years. By the time I did this interview, Nikki had gone solo and had an album to promote.
Normally I would have travelled to do the interview, but he wanted an excuse to come up to Liverpool. Johnny Thunders was playing at the Warehouse, and Nikki had been to most of the dates on the tour. Dave Haslam wrote a memoir called “Sonic Youth slept on my floor”. Well, I could write one called “Nikki Sudden slept on my sofa”.
I recognised him straight away when I met him off the train at Lime Street station. He had perfected the “elegantly wasted” look popularised by Keith Richards and Johnny Thunders.
Nikki was a big fan of both, and of lots of other people, and that’s why I liked him. People who are full of enthusiasm always feel full of life.
Nikki Sudden died in 2006, aged 49. Too young.
The hippest prince
Nikki Sudden discusses hero worship with Penny Kiley
Melody Maker, July 10, 1982
“I LOOK like a lot of other people," Nikki Sudden tells me, "Paul McCartney, Johnny Thunders, Keith Richards, Albert Ball…”
Albert Ball? "He was a First World War flying ace, and he really looked like me. If I was anyone in my previous life I was Albert Ball. And I just know that I flew in the First World War, there are so many things I know about it." So you believe in reincarnation then? "No."
Nikki is stylishly unkempt, glamorously downtrodden, a rock 'n' roll down-and-out. And nothing like a family entertainer. His McCartney eyes lack the showbiz twinkle that characterises the famous face, so that the general effect is totally different, giving an aura of melancholy.
He's been criticised for trying to emulate the macho veneer of Jagger/Richards, two of his heroes, but any image he has is closer to the Richards persona as filtered through the frailty of the other hero, Johnny Thunders, with a resulting vulnerability that should stand him in good stead with the ladies if he ever does become the pop star he'd like to be. Nikki looks like he needs mothering!
In fact, he doesn't want to grow up. "What's the point?" Hence, perhaps, the importance of fantasy in his life, not just rock 'n' roll fantasy but others too. Here's another image of Nikki, by himself: "My influences are Stingray, Biggles, and T. Rex. My favourite author is Frank Richards" (Greyfriars) "followed by W. E. Johns."
Nikki likes adventure and travel and dislikes being bored. Music is one thing that's not boring, and Nikki's approach to making music, through his career with Swell Maps, his solo LP "Waiting On Egypt", and his new band. Six Hip Princes, has barely altered.
The official version of the Swell Maps story says the group started in 1972. It wasn’t quite like that though. Nikki was 12 when he bought his first guitar ("I saved up £6 out of my pocket money, it was a lot of money in those days") but the music didn't get beyond the bedroom stage for another five years or so.
"When I first saw the Sex Pistols," recalls Nikki, "I thought, this is great, they're just like us, they can't play either." He's more proficient now, but the attitude's the same.
"The main reason I do records is for myself. It's like when you're at school and you think 'imagine having a record out', and then you do it and you think, 'oh it's a bit boring really', so you have to keep on doing something better all the time, you've got to keep that excitement and keep that interest."
ONE reason for Nikki’s present enthusiasm is his new band. Six Hip Princes are six anyway: Nikki himself on guitar, piano, and vocals; Lizard (the female vocals on "Waiting on Egypt") on vocals and piano; Anthony Thistlethwaite (also on the LP) on saxophone, bass, guitar, mandolin ("etc" adds Nikki, which is promising); Dave Kusworth ("he used to be in the Hawks - the best group ever") on guitar and vocals; Kevin Wilkinson on drums, guitar, and bass; and David Barrington on guitar, bass, and backing vocals.
The presence of a band should allow a wide range of possibilities, with Dave Kusworth and Lizard both helping with writing and singing as well as some experimentation with different instruments and styles - Lizard, for example, is inspired by the sounds of Japanese Kabuki singers.
The new songs are going to be a varied bunch - the planned single features a female vocal on one side, "Missionary Boy", and the other "All Around The World" is a funk track.
Nikki and Lizard (Lizzie to her friends) have come straight from the studios when I meet them, hot-foot from a week's work in Leamington for a weekend in Liverpool. The primary reason for the trip is not, however, to do an interview but to take in yet another Johnny Thunders gig. Nikki's seen almost all of Johnny's recent dates in Britain. "Sometimes he talks to me, and sometimes he doesn't," he says.
They first met in New York - Johnny was again the main reason that Nikki was there in the first place, and one of the best songs on Nikki's LP "Johnny Smiled Slowly" was a result of that meeting. "I was going to send him a copy of the LP but I'd be embarrassed."
There are obvious debts on the record to some of Nikki's heroes (T Rex, the Rolling Stones, Johnny Thunders himself), and to me that's part of its charm. That and the sheer infectious enthusiasm it generates.
Nikki combines the two roles of fan and musician in a way that transcends plagiarism - it's not so much music at second hand as an experience at first hand, the experience of being a fan. Nikki wouldn't quite put it that way himself.
"What's a fan?" he asks. He doesn't fool me - I know that he's spent the whole day gloating over the fact that he managed to obtain a ticket to see the Stones at Bristol!
At least he can defend himself against the criticisms he's suffered for wearing his obsessions on his sleeve - his heroes did it too. "T. Rex stuff was ripped off Eddie Cochran and the first two or three Stones albums were totally ripped off Chuck Berry." And he has an interesting point to make about his version of the Rolling Stones' "I'd Much Rather Be With The Boys" (an early Richards/Oldham song).
"I'd always wanted to do that song when I first heard it and then I found out that Johnny Thunders had done it because I’ve got this live tape and he’d changed some of the words in the middle so I deliberately kept his words in to say to anyone who knew that it was a deliberate steal as opposed to being a rip-off. Like Marc Bolan putting in the end of 'Get it On' 'meanwhile I'm still thinking', he stole that from 'Little Queenie' by Chuck Berry..."
Nikki's distinctions are somewhat subtle: "If you steal something it's OK, it's only if you try and hide what you've done that it's not. I think whatever I do and however much it's taken from something else it turns out sounding like me."
At least Nikki is honest - about his idols, and about his ideals. "I like pop stars - no, teenage idols (the Stones were teenage idols). It's what everyone should be." But he's already told me he doesn't believe in fashions. "I'm not going out of my way to be fashionable but if I went on Top of the Pops looking like this I'd still look better than anyone else on it," he says modestly.
Nikki doesn't subscribe to the theory of the new golden age of pop: to him the golden age was ten years ago (it's probably significant that this coincides with the first time he started playing music). "In '72-'73 there were T. Rex, Gary Glitter, Slade, Sweet, all on the same programme, it was really exciting, but if you turn it on now it's really boring. Who's going to remember a Linx record?"
AS for the new romantics as possible successors of the glam ideal, they never captured the energy or excitement of that era.
'They did it too seriously - with glam it was really haphazard, it was fun, but they spent ten hours putting on their make up and they went to a club and they couldn't move in case their make-up fell off. Glam rock was all about enjoying yourself, it was fun."
Nikki feels that ABC are on the right track by wearing gold lame jackets but isn't over enthusiastic about the actual records. The only group that really comes up to standard is Adam and the Ants (or at least the Adam/Marco partnership).
"I like Adam and the Ants but that's just T. Rex ten years on. 'Kings Of The Wild Frontier' could have been a T. Rex album ... But that's why I love the Ants because they brought fun back and I thought it was really going to catch on but it didn't."
The underground is no substitute: "Joy Division were the Moody Blues of the late Seventies". But today's pop has little to offer either. "All the stuff now is so bland, sterile music - catchy tunes but nothing happening in it at all. You can write a catchy tune but have something great happening in it as well." (I suggest "Channel Steamer" as an example - listen to it.)
Nikki Sudden knows where the image stops: his admiration is never unquestioning acceptance of a legend (with its attendant dangers). And he knows that people aren't always like the image. Johnny Thunders (him again!) is, Nikki tells me "one of the nicest people I met in New York". The hero worship's still there though. Nikki's excitement is infectious, and that night at Liverpool's Warehouse Club, I remember how good it feels be a fan.
We're crushed in front of the stage, waiting, with that curious resigned excitement, the mixture of physical discomfort made bearable by anticipation. Nikki's looking quietly anxious but bubbling underneath as he turns round to me and says, "For ages there was nothing to get excited about, but now this and I've got a ticket to see the Stones!"
Rock 'n' roll fantasy isn't dead, and everything in this story is falling into place. There's Johnny returning for the encore, a small frail figure in a black hat, quietly strumming: "Here I am, all alone, and all dressed up to kill ... ". It's the very song we were talking about "I'd Much Rather Be With The Boys".
Everything has a place and everything overlaps: more images that fit into the story: Nikki playing me some of his newly recorded tapes, singing over backing tracks. Nikki doing Marc Bolan doing Eddie Cochran; Nikki doing Bob Dylan; Johnny Thunders doing Bob Dylan ("Like a Rolling Stone"); Nikki doing Johnny Thunders doing Keith Richard.
And Nikki bouncing down a Liverpool sidestreet in the middle of the night in search of taxis with the image of that small compelling figure still our minds: "I stole my version of 'Much Rather Be With The Boys' from Johnny Thunders - and I don't care who knows it!"
Listen to Nikki
I’ve still got this record. It’s fab.
Love Nikki and Swell Maps. Their spirit is so inspiring and punk. Great songs, awesome modesty. Thanks for this !