Jack Viper: Return of the Sleaze

Speaking with air about the current music scene, the future, Viperettes and an unhealthy obsession with multi-purpose midgets, I unleash to you - the snake out of the bag - via a dodgy Chinese buffet - Jack Viper.

Hearing about these guys is all thanks to Ed, Jack Viper’s guitarist. At the end of Kerrang’s New School of Rock tour at the Garage, Islington in April of 2005, I was approached by a bloke with blonde ruffled hair in a leather jacket with a ‘cheeky-chappie’ grin on his face. “If you like this lot, you’ll like these” he said about Hurricane Party (now Roadstar) giving me a couple of flyers saying ‘slithering up your alley’. Thinking no more about it, I put the flyers in my back pocket and rocked on for the rest of the night.

Flicking through Kerrang! every week, I loved reading the classifieds - just out of plain curiosity to see what type of things or people were wanted. I kept seeing ‘vocalist wanted’ and to reply to ‘Jack Viper’. The name rang a bell and sure it was the very same Jack Viper that had I had been given flyers for a few weeks before. Then the ads stopped appearing, I thought ‘wonder what kind of guy they’ve got’. A week or so later, I checked out Jack Viper’s website and a statement on there said that they’d found their man - modestly from a sleaze background.

Checking them out, it seemed to be that they were a sublime mix of classic sleaze with a touch of hard metal. Their music is passionately charged with all of life’s experiences, cleverly written and well executed with killer riffs and drum beats to bang the head to.

At the moment, as much as they’d like to - they don’t emulate the ‘Sunset Strip’ lifestyle of sleaze legends such as Mötley Cruë or Guns ‘N’ Roses. But for now its safe to say that the Jack Viper have stamped their mark on the streets of Soho and Camden.

They have supported the likes of LA Guns in Germany and amassed a strong following with only being together about 9 months and with the amount of publicity that’s been flying around about them you’d think they had an army of people fronting the ‘Viper cause. Touring relentlessly around London whether it be going out to pubs and clubs and handing out flyers or creating a stir playing live - the fact is, they are spreading the word that sleaze rock is back.

Before the interview, we grab a bite to eat in a rather dodgy Chinese/Thai buffet just up the road from the venue and stick to the stuff that looks the least like road kill. Our table in the restaurant sticks out like a sore thumb as the boys are all in their rock attire (consisting of copious amounts of eyeliner and leathers). Lead singer Jay, who has just ‘sleazed’ himself up with eyeliner and a Jack Daniels bandana talks emphatically about midgets - between mouthfuls, stripper midgets and roadie midgets. General natter about the rock scene and recent offerings from favoured artists dominate conversation until we begrudgingly put hands into pockets to pay for the strange food. Rocking on the venue which looks like a trendy lounge bar from the outside and is a smoky beer pit on the inside. Beers all round are cracked open and the dictation machine is turned on ... cue Jay (Vox), Ed (Guitar), Dave (Bass) and Dan (Drums).

Nix: In your words, what does Jack Viper stand for?
Jay: Interesting one ... sleaze, traditional values
Dave: Traditional sleaze values - the big f*** you to the current f***ing music scene. Which is f***ing dire, lets be honest about it.
Jay: About pushing it to the edge, its about making it fun and exciting again.
Dave: Its about people who don’t wanna see the Arctic Monkeys at number one.
Ed: There’s too many Indie bands man.
Dave: You come to a ‘Viper gig, you have a good time
Jay: Its about the whole package, its unhinged. We don’t even think we know what the f***’s gonna happen next.
Dave: If we don’t know, the crowd don’t know - the f***ing crowd’s gonna come back!
Ed: It’s a car crash on a stage.
Dan: You go away feeling f***ing great and p*ssed as a fart.

Nix: Three of you (Ed, Dave and Dan) were in a band called ‘Jaded’ before Jack Viper playing ‘melodic rock’, what made you go towards the sleaze?
Ed: It’s what we’ve always been into really and just kind of fell into the other thing. We finally thought, we’ve got to do what we love and it is the right time to do it.
Dave: The songs that we wrote were getting harder and harder.
Jay: (Evil laugh) I was looking for a new band. When they auditioned me, it happened - we clicked.
Ed: We set up a flag saying we’re searching for some sleazy m***erf***er to come. He emailed me and I didn’t hear from him for about a month - it was like ‘Dude, are you gonna like f***ing show up?! (laughs) But eventually, we hooked up and it clicked.

Nix: How many people did you have auditioning?
Ed: About 20, something like that. We had a whole range of random characters man. We had this Egyptian guy.
Dave: His glasses were like milk bottle glasses with a massive Afro and a huge, huge rucksack. He trekked all the way from Mile End.
Dan: He was going for it, he had the voice and everything.
Ed: We asked him like what kind of songs do you like and he spent the next ten minutes saying (puts on mysterious Egyptian accent) “Ok! But first, I want to tell you the reasons behind this song - like about this wave of life” and we were like “f*** that”. (Laughs from the boys) But Jay was good because we were like ‘right we’ve got these songs to sing something over the top’ and Jay came out with (violent rock scream)‘Waaaaaugggghhh!’.
Dave: We thought, no f***ing about. We made our mind up at the first minute.

Nix: Jay, I’ve heard about you being noted as being quite ‘notorious’ as a sleaze rocker in South Africa. You’ve been banned from a couple of radio stations - what for?
Jay: For being me! (Laughs) At that stage, I had the only sleaze rock band in South Africa and we released a single called ‘Wooden Idol’ which was sort of a p*ss take on Christians and South Africa being a Christian country ... it got played once on a demo race and it won. The DJ got phoned that night by the station manager and he said to him if he ever plays that song again, he’ll fire him. We didn’t know that at the stage and I went on a campaign of hate against him. We started chanting his name, saying “F*ck off Barney” - his name is Barney Simons. Eventually we got banned on four radio stations!

Nix: What’s been your biggest challenge so far?
Dave: F***ing getting from Cologne to Munich! (Laughs) We had no hotel room booked for the next night.
Ed: They were like ‘oh we want you to play in Munich as well’, then we were like ‘oi, why don’t we do that?!’(with LA Guns).
Dave: Stuck in Cologne at 5 in the morning. We were looking on the internet trying to look at the times of the f***ing trains, plane times and car hire prices. We eventually settled on the plane.

Ed: We ended up blagging our way onto a flight and getting there which was all good. Then after that we got in a taxi, which was a fairly long journey!
Dave: He was a f***ing c*** (laughs)
Ed: He (taxi driver) drove us the whole way round Munich instead of going straight through and charged us triple price.
Dave: And when we got there, our hotel wasn’t fully finished!
Ed: That I guess was our biggest challenge. That and going on after an acoustic duo at the Purple Turtle was weird as well!
Jay: Band wise, I think in the space of time we’ve been together, we’ve done really well.

Nix: About Viperettes! The Viperette section of your website pictures girls in seductive poses and minimal clothing. Your MySpace is heavily populated with girls. Do you go out and find the Viperettes, is it like a sleaze recruitment drive?
Ed: (Mock defensive) The Viper doesn’t need to get girls on the internet! (Laughs) MySpace is a cool promotional tool. It’s a really good way of people checking out new bands.
Jay: The thing with us is that its just exploded. After a couple of weeks of starting it up, we had people wanting to hear stuff.

Nix: So how did the Viperette section come up?
Dave: (Laughing) We wanted to give something back! We give out a lot of ‘us’, we want something back.
Ed: It gives the ladies a chance to be a part of the band! (Sort of).
Jay: With the Viperette of the month, a lot of people get it the wrong way. With the kind of music we play, we celebrate the female form.
Dave: (Laughs) We’re all about equal opportunities!

Nix: Who would you say are your main musical influences?
Ed: Cheap booze? (Laughs)
Jay: Musical dude! (Laughs) For me - Guns N’ Roses, Faster Pussycat ...
Ed: Similar for me. Slash was a pretty good influence for me. Quite a lot of sleaze guitarists. Also people like Steve Vai to a certain extent.
Dave: I’m not influenced by anyone, f*** them! (Laughs)
Jay: Dave’s into cheap booze and pornography!

Nix: Each one of you must have a favourite track of all time, what is it?
Ed&Dave: (Laughs) “Whiskey Town” by Jack Viper!
Jay: Thats a really tough one. I’d say “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N’ Roses.
Ed: Yeah, that’s a f***ing good opener to an album.
Dave: That’s hard. I’ve listened to it a thousand times but I want something new. There’s nothing that instantly springs to mind. I want to write an 18 year old’s favourite song of all time.
Ed: I’d say any number of GN’R tracks are good. Or Mötley Cruë. I’m more of a “Dr. Feelgood” man than a “Girls, Girls, Girls” man.
Dan: I haven’t got one, that’s hard!
Ed: (Suggesting) Daniel Powter!
Dave: (Sarcastically) He writes a f***ing good song (laughs)
Dan: “Welcome to the Jungle” - GN’R. “Hallowed be thy name” - Iron Maiden.

Nix: If you could have a drink with anyone dead or alive, who would it be?
Ed: For me it would be a large bottle of Jack Daniels, Liv Tyler and maybe Pamela Anderson as well. If Axl wants to come along too, he’s more than welcome.
Jay: I would say women, but you’re not going to have a drink with women are you now? (winks).
Dave: Nikki Sixx, I’d sit down and have a good banter with him.
Jay: I’d say Axl and find out what the f*** is going on with ‘Chinese Democracy’! I’d even like to speak to Jack Daniels himself! Give me the secret of his brilliant skills!
Dave: I wouldn’t mind a binge with Derek Smalls from Spinal Tap! (laughs)
Dan: Slash, because he’d be a really cool person to hang out with just out of curiosity - Elvis Presley, he is the ‘King after all.

Nix: What has been your best gig so far?
Ed: Munich (with LA Guns) or the ‘Bull & Gate’ (London). Munich for the hardcore binge, ‘Bull & Gate’ for the performance.
Dave: I enjoyed the very first gig we did man, at the Garage.
Ed: A train wreck.

Nix: Worst gig?
Jay: The f***ing ‘Battle of the Bands’ at the Borderline, September.
Ed: The lowest point was when the winning band (Singled Out) said that their main influence was Pete Doherty. We thought, we’re at the wrong gig here man.
Jay: We only played two songs, we needed to play more.
Dave: It wasn’t that we played badly, it was that the whole f***ing setup was an absolute shambles.
Ed: ‘Battle of the Bands’ is always a bit anal. You’ve got a panel of judges and that’s not really rock and roll.

Nix: The thing with the Viper at the moment is that you are manager-less, how has that impacted on the band?
Ed: I think that we’ve done really well. We’ve been doing it all ourselves and what we’ve achieved in such a short period of time is really cool. We do need to take some of the pressures off now because its starting to snowball.
Dave: More and more people are approaching us and it’s getting more difficult to do. We’ve still got to write tunes. (Laughs) I want someone to set up our stage, have our guitars tuned, have my hair trimmed and my eyeliner made up for me!
Jay: (To Dave) You’re not a Prima Donna are you?(laughs)

Nix: Any signs of the album in process?
Ed: We’ve got a lot of tunes that we haven’t got recorded yet. I think we’d like to wait until we get offered a deal before attempting a full-length album. At the moment, its like all little bits and bobs.
Jay: We’re planning on maybe doing a single and then a web exclusive track. We want to wait for the deal. It’s not a million miles away. There are things in the pipeline. We don’t want to go down the road that a lot of bands do - they try and self produce it and wait around - you end up screwing yourself. We want to make a debut album that blows people away and people say “Oh f***, that’s what rock and roll is all about”.
Ed: The tunes that we’ve got recorded at the moment, we’d do them all again because we did them in a short time frame - on a shoestring, so it would be good if we got time in a studio.

Nix: Viper songs are highly charged with emotion, whether it be hate or lust - who do you detest?
Dave: (Laughs) I’ve got too much love to hate!
Jay: Leading the pack at the moment is that tw*t Pete Doherty from Babyshambles.
Ed: There is a lot of bands like that who are high on my hit list.
Jay: Its those people who have lost the context of what rock and roll is all about.
Ed: Back in the day, it was all about the show and entertaining people. Good old balls-to-the-wall music. But that’s kind of died down into the nineties and still really low now and I think that a bit of a shake up will get that balls-to-the-wall - a bit of danger, back again.

Get your free copy of Jack Viper’s first EP, “Sleazy Listening” via the Jack Viper Website. Also, while you are there, download one of their newest tracks ‘Go F*** Yourself’ - for free!

- Words and all images by Nicola (Nix) Crichton

© Pure Rawk 2006