“My folks met through working in hotels in Newquay, Cornwall in the early 1970s. My mother grew up in Sunderland and had been a skinhead and a first-wave mod and was really into music. She’d lived in Clapham and bought records straight off the boat from Jamaica. Duke Reid, Prince Buster—that sort of stuff. My dad was born near Salford, Greater Manchester and was a long-haired rock fan (Led Zeppelin, Free, The Mighty Groundhogs, Ten Years After etc). He’s introverted and also loved Leonard Cohen and Neil Young. That meant that when they left Cornwall and moved up to Sunderland to get married, and then have me in ’82, they had a pretty decent record collection for me to get my hands all over as I was growing up.”
“Some of my earliest memories are being swung around the kitchen to Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Right Round,” which was bought for me on 7” from Blandford Street cos I wouldn’t stop singing it. I remember hiding under the bed covers listening to Jeff Wayne’s version of War of the Worlds. I loved the Thompson Twins so we got their record, my dad would help me tape things off the radio, which by the time I was a teenager became an absolute obsession. I didn’t get a CD player until I was 16, so I grew up with vinyl and tapes.
My mother used to work at the Philips factory and worked strange shifts, so a lot of evenings when I was growing up it was just me and my dad at home. I’d stay up playing Led Zeppelin LPs on the record player. I was put off Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor by the beige sleeves until I was much older (when I finally realised what amazing singers both were).
I had some friends who liked music, especially by the time Britpop arrived, but it wasn’t until I got to college that I met other kids who enjoyed crate digging, obsessively reading about record labels, and collecting stuff. I was into Fierce Panda, Damaged Goods, Domino, Too Pure etc at this point.
In the late-90s, Sunderland had quite a few good record shops, split between the chains (Our Price, HMV, Woolworths, Solid Sounds) and a couple of good Indies (Volume, Hot Rats). That seems crazy now—Hot Rats still exists, owned by Toy Dolls drummer Marty, but the rest are long gone.
After The Beatles Anthology aired on TV in around ’96, I got a guitar and started trying to learn the basics. We formed The Futureheads in 2000, after I’d met Jaff, Barry, Dave, and the Brewis brothers who went on to form Field Music. All of us liked different stuff, but our common ground was Wire, XTC, Devo, Gang of Four, and the new breed of American punks, like Shellac, Les Savy Fav, Fugazi, Ex Models, Gastr del Sol.
The first time I visited London I went to Rough Trade and bought White Blood Cells. I became obsessed with the Rough Trade off Portobello Road after that, and was over the moon when they put Futureheads on their post-punk compilation LP a few years later.
We toured squats in Europe with Milky Wimpshake in 2002 and I was introduced to the concept of distros—where people would bring huge amounts of records to sell at shows. This was incredible to me, and I’d spend money on albums instead of guitar strings until Barry and I fell out about that and I had to rethink my approach.
When The Futureheads started touring the States from 2004, I was so excited to find a record shop in every city we’d play—obvious highlights being the Amoeba stores (which we got to play at one point), but also Sonic Boom (Seattle), Criminal Records (Atlanta), and Waterloo (Austin).
In 2006 I set up (for a short time) a small label of my own called Longest Mile, and we put out a handful of very cool 7” singles by some bands that were from the North-East (This Ain’t Vegas, Catweasels), or bands that I’d toured with (Shout Out Louds, Paper Cranes). We nearly got the chance to release the first Tapes N Tapes album, which I love, but XL made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.
I’ve always bought vinyl, but I must admit I went through a lull when the whole internet streaming thing took off. I felt like physical records lost their value for a while. I hate that I felt that now, looking back, because I have massive gaps in my collection that I’m still trying to fill. I’m an obsessive Mark Kozelek guy, too, so I’m always trying to find the LPs that I don’t have in my vinyl discography of his stuff (everything gets super expensive, super quickly, though).
We’ve just recently released a new record ourselves, and we played some of the Rough Trade stores to support its release. We’ve pressed 3 versions of the vinyl LP of this album.
There’s still a buzz when you’re sifting through the racks. No amount of Discogs or eBay can replace that, really.”
—Ross Millard
Powers, the new LP from The Futureheads is in stores now—on vinyl.
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PHOTO: P. A. KNOX
