MUSIC: Supergrass - They’re still alright

Mar 7 2008 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

Laura Davis meets the Supergrass drummer whose band is still going strong, more than a decade after Britpop

MICK QUINN’S most abiding memory of playing Liverpool is of waking up on an Adelphi bathroom floor covered in feathers.

He had fallen asleep there, wearing only his underwear, after a particularly vigorous pillow fight with drummer Danny Goffey.

Having had Trigger the horse to stay and Grand National race-goers sledging down the main staircase on metal serving trays, this incident is unlikely to go down in the hotel’s history. But it has become synonymous with the city in Quinn’s mind.

Now, as one of his first tour dates since falling out of a French hotel window and breaking his back, perhaps he will remember Liverpool for something else – returning to the stage after a six-month absence.

“I’ve told everyone I’m going to be ready for these gigs. I’m on my exercise bike every day. I’m really looking forward to it,” enthuses the Supergrass bass player, after sheepishly recounting his lengthy stay in hospital, where he had to lie almost motionless for months having stepped out of an open window in his rush to go to the toilet in the middle of the night.

Unable to keep away altogether, Quinn has been hiding in the audience and watching his bandmates reign the stage.

“It was brilliant. It was quite illuminating, and frustrating, too, because I kept seeing Danny making drumming mistakes and wanted to tell him off.

“I could feel in the crowd that everyone was behind the band,” he recalls in his usual low-key manner.

“I was trying to keep a low profile because I don’t think it’s very nice for one of the band members to be sitting in the audience when you’ve come to see them, but people came up and said ‘hello’ and ‘mind how you go’, ‘look out for those steps’ and things.

“It was really strange, it all being totally familiar and yet not, but it was great watching Gaz (Coombes) without actually without having to concentrate on what I was doing. He’s such a brilliant frontman.”

Although he may have recently adopted the gait of a much older man (although he promises he is now nearly as limber as ever), Quinn is actually 38.

Not bad for someone who had his first Top 40 hit 13 years ago, you would be right in thinking, but he is already starting to feel like an old timer.

Supergrass was the group that members of the new wave of Indie bands, including Kaiser Chiefs and Arctic Monkeys, were listening to in their bedrooms as teenagers while dreaming of escape.

“We’ve got fans from bands like the Arctic Monkeys who say we’ve been an influence to them,” says Quinn.

“It’s extremely flattering. Even before that happened people would describe bands as having ‘the sound of Supergrass’.

“It’s great that people can instantly identify your band with stuff.

“It’s great when you meet these people and they say ‘I went to your gig and we were blown away and we wanted to start a band’.”

Quinn adds that those buying their albums are not necessarily old enough to have appreciated them at the beginning of their musical career.

“There are people who look quite young at our gigs. I thought they’d all be people who followed us from the start, they’d be in their early 30s now, but we get a good mix.

“I think it’s because we don’t try to recreate our Brit Pop sound on every album, we try to be creative.”

Supergrass formed in 1993, as a reincarnation of The Jennifers, set up by Rob Coombes (Gaz’s brother) and Goffey, pupils of Wheatley Park School, in Oxford. Quinn, by then a former pupil, knew Coombes from working in the local Harvester pub.