By Darren Grayer.
Transvision Vamp enjoyed considerable success in the late eighties with ten UK chart hits and two top five albums, with Velveteen, the band’s second album reaching number one. Their popularity also spread as far as Australia, with lead singer, Wendy James, very much the focal point of the group – the explosive blonde with a rebellious attitude that saw her appear on the front cover of just about every music publication going as well numerous socialite magazines.
When that came to an end, Wendy continued to record under her own name, and last October she released solo album number seven, The Shape Of History. That saw her play a number of intimate in-store gigs to help promote it, but now, backed by a full band she is going out on the road again with a UK tour this October, including a date at The Brook here in Southampton on the 10th, followed by dates in Australia and New Zealand in 2026.
With the visit to Southampton in mind, I caught up with Wendy to ask her about the coming months, and how much was she looking forward to playing live again.
“We’re doing a 21-date tour round the UK in October, and I’ll be playing songs from all ten of my albums,” she said. “Although I did quite an extensive record shop tour with my guitarist last year this will be the first time songs from The Shape Of History will have been played with a full electric band, and with those ten albums including Transvision Vamp I have quite a set list to choose from.
“Then in February we’ll be touring as Transvision Vamp in Australia and New Zealand, and it looks like the start of more to come!”
DG- I wanted to ask you about The Shape Of History. Does the title suggest that it’s reflective of life so far for you?
“ Yes, there are personal moments in all of the albums I’ve done, but I decided on calling this The Shape Of History because as a tenth album it seems something of an anniversary number, and I guess it’s a round up of any wisdom I may have gleaned over the years, plus the eternal attitude that runs through me with that kind of new wave, New York punky sound,”
DG- Would you say your approach to song-writing has changed much over the years?
“I guess it’s become more refined and a bit more complex. Like any guitarist, when I started, the focus was on two or three chords. The legendary Lou Reed once said you only need two or three chords to write a great song, but it’s deceptively difficult to do that really well. My playing is pretty good nowadays, and I guess I’ve just become more evolved in my song-writing, but that doesn’t mean more complicated. In some cases, it’s more simple, just cut out the waffle and get straight to the point, and work out the melody and chord structure, along with the lyrical content.”
DG- It does sound to me like the arrangements on this album are wider. There seem to be more strings and keyboards, and the overall sound incorporates a wide range of influences. Are you influenced by a greater range of things these days?
“It’s just a desire to – I mean, if I had all the money in the world, I’d take a full orchestra everywhere I went, but I don’t and I haven’t, ha-ha. In the studio there were certain instruments that my keyboard and piano player, and the rest of my band were able to play. We used a clavichord, and we had all sorts of 60s,70s and even 80s electro organs that make up a lot of that sound, so yes, I did what I could to expand the sound.”
DG- And the things that influenced you in the first place, are you still in love with them?
“Oh God, yeah, I’ll always go back to The Stooges, although not just back, The Stooges will always be with me along with The Velvet Underground. The mid-70s, 74 to 79, that downtown New York new wave still excites me. Really it’s why I moved to NY, even though I grew up in London, surrounded by London punks, it was the NY scene that thrilled me the most.
“One of the albums I made a few years ago, The Price Of The Ticket, included players such as Lenny Kaye of the Patty Smith Group, James Williamson from Iggy and the Stooges, James Sclavunos of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Glen Matlock of The Sex Pistols, and it was engineered by Ivan Julian of Richard Hell and the Voidoids, which meant many of the people inspiring me to do what I do ended up on this record!”
DG- I can’t help asking you about the past as well. With Transvision Vamp enjoying a fair mount of success, you were having to cope with a large amount of exposure. What was it like coping with that – did it just come naturally to you, or was it at all stressful?
“No, I can’t remember being stressed, just working really hard. The best way to describe it is you are at the centre of the hurricane, which is all quite stable. It’s only the whirling dervish that’s so nuts around you that is the crazy bit. In the centre my friends didn’t change, my routine didn’t change, the pub I went to didn’t change. You don’t suddenly become a millionaire overnight, but of course it’s exciting, you want to be on Top of the Pops, and of course you’re so thrilled when you hear yourself on Radio 1, or you get your first NME cover, but it’s still the same life and you still live in the same flat. It is a brilliant learning curve, and a hardball lesson – you learn on you or feet or you don’t make it.”
So, there you have it from someone who has tasted the ups and downs of life in the music industry. Wendy James may well have mellowed and become a little more wise over the course of her career, but underneath she’s still the explosive rock n roll front woman who has stayed true to her influences.
For tickets and more information about The Brook date, click here.
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