King Lizard: A Monster in the city

Interview with Flash, Sky, Alice and Niro

A fusion of sleaze, punk, hard rock and metal - meet King Lizard. Their acidic, dirty hard rock riffs and gravelly vocals have landed recent supports with the likes of Robin Black, Parasite City and Dirty Rig as well as headlining heaps of shows around the capital and further afield. They've got a new EP out called "Late Night Dynamite" and have also done a video for the first track on there, "Rock N Roll Me".

Nix perched on a wall in the car park of Bar Monsta with Flash (vocals), Sky (drums), Alice (bass) and Niro (guitar) after their show with Parasite City to talk about who they are, what they’ve got to say, their new EP, their new video, cheese, sticky sweet things and what they’re going to be doing next.

Nix: Let us into the world of King Lizard, a little bit about each of you?
Sky: I’m Sky and I play drums in the band called King Lizard! The lizard of kings ...
Flash (observing Nix’s dictation machine): Is this a phone? It looks like a dildo.
Sky: Does it vibrate? (laughs)
Flash: I’m Flash, the lead singer. I’ve been doing the band for a while and I love it! Here’s the bass player.
Alice: Hi Guys!
Flash: This Pure Raaaaaaaawk. With a K. Oh, you can’t see it but he’s showing his -
Nix: King Lizard!
Flash: Can we swear in this? (Nix nods)
Alice: Oh! I love that f***ing s*** guys!

Nix: How did you come out and about with a name like King Lizard?
Flash: Oh, we haven’t come out. Not yet!
Sky: We might look like ladies!
Nix (laughs): Ok, so how did you come ‘up’ with the name?
Flash: I was sitting there thinking of a name for the band for a long time and we went through various names. There was ‘Star Scream’, ‘Graveyard Tramps’, ‘Dog House’. I was trying to think of something.
Nix: Actually, ‘Graveyard Tramps’ is awesome!
Flash: I like it too! When I do a side project its going to be ‘Graveyard Tramps’ so don’t steal it! I came up with King Lizard because I wanted a name that sounded like a monster or something big.
Alice: Big like my cock.
Flash: King Lizard is also a kind of play on words of penis as well. It’s kind of like a big reptile. Not that I’ve got scales on my cock.
Sky: Or small arms, because that would be weird.

Nix: How did you guys get together?
Flash: Crikey, that’s a long story. I formed King Lizard bloody ages ago with a totally different bunch of people when I fell out with my old band and I just wanted to my own thing. I started writing my own songs and putting a band together. I then grabbed anybody who could play anything and carried on for ages. One by one people that didn’t really want to go all the way were people that we had to drop. Then I met Sky, who was reluctant at first (laughs). He came to see us play and thought that he could do better so he joined. Then I met Alice.
Alice: But I joined last
Flash: Yeah, but I met you first! Alice is from Rome and he came to London to find a rock n roll band. We saw his advert and gave him a call -
Sky: Then turned him down! (Laughs) got someone else in for about six months and -
Flash: At the time, there was a couple of people in the band that didn’t like Alice. I was dead set on Alice but eventually they came round. Hang on, no we didn’t - we sacked em! Then I met Niro when he was playing in a band called Skintight Jaguars - who were a bunch of assholes.
Sky: You can print that! (Laughs)
Flash: I heard that they were a bunch of assholes. I met Niro first and he seemed like a real f***ing nice guy. The rest of the members were really rude, reckoned they were the s*** and they really weren’t! They had cool waistcoats but that was Niro’s idea! So then we got Niro. He came to see us a few times and then said that he wanted to join the band. We ended up sacking a guy because he was a pain in the arse. We’ve now got four guys including myself that really want to give it everything.

Nix: You’ve got your new EP out “Late Night Dynamite”. Where did you get the inspiration from the stuff thats on there?
(A large holler comes from one side of the car park) Niro: What’s up baby!
(The conversation diverts off onto a far away tangent)
Flash: As far as my influences go - there is a whole range from Rob Zombie to Marilyn Manson to Motley Crue/Guns N Roses. Stuff like that.
Sky: We’ve got influences that we each bring stuff from but there is band favourites that we all get into.
Niro: Beach boys!
Flash: We all love the classics like Guns N Roses and stuff like that but as far as when I write music is concerned is all influenced by crazy riffs and dark riffs. Then I get Niro to add to it which gives it the added ‘cheese’ factor to make a total pop song. It’s f***ing great really.
Nix: You have the toast and he has the cheese?
Sky: No butter, just bread and cheese.

Nix: Anything else that you’ve been doing lately?
Sky: Recently we made a video of “Rock N Roll Me” which is due to be released any second I pick up a DVD! It’ll be on YouTube, MySpace and all the usual crap like that.
Flash: It looked good when we were doing it. We were tired of every other band doing something that’s cliche. We just did ours stripped down - not naked! But just ourselves, all unshaven in a rehearsal room - just as a plain, straight forward rock band.

Nix: What sets you apart from any other band at the moment?
Flash: We get lumped in with the ‘sleaze’ scene and the ‘glam rock’ scene. Obviously we’re influenced by it, but I wouldn’t class us as it. I know some of our songs are quite mature - but there is a level of maturity bubbling under the surface. We’re not a band that sings (scrunches up face and makes a gravelly vocal noise) “Ooh Sticky Sweet” and we don’t rhyme “sleazy” with “easy” and stuff like that! There’s quite a few. I mean, Red Star Rebels have got a song like “We’re on Our Way To Hollywood” or something like that - I’m sure they’ve never actually f***ing been there! If I was from LA or somewhere like that, in the 80's then yeah, I could write a whole album right now. In a nutshell, we write about things we want, things we hate and things we love. All our songs are true stories.
Alice: Yeah, but not any true stories.
Flash: Yes, interesting stories. Not ‘Oh I got off the bus today’ -
Sky: ‘It was sticky sweet’! Or something with rattlesnakes.
Flash: I know we’ve got cowboy boots on but we just sing about what’s important to us, we dress how we want to dress and we do what we want to do. We want to be leaders not the followers. We want to appeal to everybody, that’s the cool thing. We’ve proved that, we’ve played indie clubs and stuff like that.
Sky: There are some great bands out there that go out on the stage, look the part and the rest of it - but when it comes down to it, they don’t have the songs.
Alice: Out there, its all f***ing real. Actually I can prove that we sleep with these cowboy boots on! Really!

Nix: A favourite gig in memory?
Flash: With this line up, my favourite is the last gig that we did - not the one just now (Parasite City, November) we played a 12 song set, we had a good audience - we played old tracks for the old fans and new tracks for the new fans. We just went down brilliantly. That was my favourite gig at the moment. In the past, we’ve done the Mean Fiddler - but that wasn’t with these guys. I want to go back and play there again as we’ve got an actual fan base now opposed to just bringing your parents along, you know?

Nix: A crappy gig in memory that you’d like to erase?
Flash: A place in Sunbury which is kind of like a little town out in South East London. We booked the gig ourselves and promoted it ourselves. We made s***loads of money but we were f***ing rubbish! I was good. But everybody else! The feedback, pissed guitarists - it was a pile of s***. They’ve all been sacked now! (Laughs).

Nix: Where do you see rock music going in the next year or so?
Sky: Hopefully away from anything NME cover. Can’t stand anything like that.
Flash: Its obvious that this kind of proper rock n roll that people want to sing along to and want to enjoy - bands like us and Nothin To Lose - bands like that - are giving people what they want. Everyone’s into what was cool in the 80's and stuff. We’re trying to do that but modernise it and reinvent it. Its definitely going away from the ‘The’ bands. Either way, the future is that all the main bands are going to be sleaze rock, glam rock or hard rock.
Sky: Or called Rattlesnake something!
Flash: There is going to be a lot of s*** out there when us and Nothin To Lose take the stage (laughs) everyone is going to try and copy us! But there will also be good bands out there that are similar. That is where I see rock going anyway otherwise I wouldn’t be doing this, I’d just be doing metal or something!

Nix: What’s your favourite song that you play?
Sky: Probably “Rock N Roll Me”
Flash: You hated that when we first started playing it!
Sky: I did, but now I can chuck my sticks around everywhere and its great! You can really fly when you get into it.
Alice: “Come Get Some”. I’m a big fan of it. A year ago actually I was so impressed by that song. So punk rock, so real! It’s like if you walk around London and smell the air, feel the s***! (all the band laugh) No, its true actually! Its what we live.
Flash: They are all my favourite songs but I think “Never Be Mine” will be my favourite because it’s a long one, its an epic one and its got a bit of a ballad in there and its also got a mental heavy bit. It’s about a time in my life where there was this girl who wouldn’t leave me alone and I basically used her for ages and ages. I felt really bad about it so I wrote a song about it. Its totally honest, just listen to the words. It says there why I did it and why - I’m sorry for being a c*** but that’s the way it is.
Sky: When we play it, its like “oh god, see you guys in about seven minutes then!”, but when you rip into the opening chords its excellent.
Flash: I do love the song, but in rehearsal sometimes I go “f***, I really cannot be bothered to do it” because I know I can sing it with my arsehole but I know the fans love it and like singing along to it.
Alice: The complete opposite reason why I love “Come Get Some”. He was a c***, he was proud to be an asshole!
Flash: It was true, it was a girl that was messing me around for ages and she split up with her boyfriend and I was all excited and then she got back with him the next day and I was gutted.
Nix: I know when speaking to Nothin To Lose, they had a crazy apple stalker.
Flash: Yeah, I read about that! We’ve had some mental case stalkers. I’m a bit worried because I had this stalker that was sending me emails and stuff saying that she was receiving psychic messages from me and that I was the ghost of her dead boyfriend and that I was stealing her life. I was given a number from the police to deal with this kind of situation. We go on tour and we meet many, many fans and who knows - any one could stick a knife in my back.

Nix: Have you had any major ‘Spinal Tap’ moments?
Sky: We are ‘Spinal Tap’!
Flash: I’ve loved Spinal Tap since I was 11! Lets put it this way, our last tour was supposed to be sixteen dates and it ended up being four. The first day got cancelled whilst we were waiting for the bus. It was actually a proper tour bus! It had six beds, shower and a DVD player! So we’re waiting for the tour bus -
Sky: For the tour that was supposed to be four dates and is now three!
Flash: The first night was cancelled and then we were waiting til about midnight. Then the tour bus broke down so we ended up in a mini bus then we just couldn’t find anywhere. We played the Sound in Leicester Square. We split up and we got lost in the building. That was a bit Spinal Tap!

Nix: Last one, what’s your intentions for the rest of this year into 2007?
Sky: Get this video out! Which is done and dusted. Push the CD which we’ve just got pressed. Post them to people that have bought them already!
Flash: Someone already moaned to me today that their CD hasn’t turned up yet.
Sky: They don’t realise its me. Its not magical little men that jump around posting CDs (laughs) its me!
Flash: My personal aims are for us to get some good management and a decent record deal because I’m sick of playing these places over and over again. We’ve got something to say and we want to say it!

Check out King Lizard on their official site www.kinglizard.co.uk or their MySpace www.myspace.com/kinglizardmusic. Their new EP “Late Night Dynamite” is out now and the video to “Rock N Roll Me” is available to watch on their MySpace.

Words and live images by Nicola “Nix” Crichton, main interview image courtesy of the King Lizard MySpace.

© Pure Rawk 2006