Whipping Boy are being hailed in some quarters as a possible next big thing out of Ireland. Nathan met the band before their Birmingham concert. He would like to apologise in advance for any quotes attributed to the wrong band member, as it's a pain in the arse differentiating between similar Irish accents on a dictaphone.

How did the four of you get together?
Ferghal (singer): The first time we met was the first time we played, out in the country at an old time waltz. A 21st birthday with an old time waltz band.

And that was 7 years ago, now?
Paul (guitar): 8 years. We were all introduced by this girl, to play at this party. We'd never met before - so we just decided we'd do some cover versions. The first time we met was playing at the gig. It was a bit of a disaster, but we thought it was great. We were dragged off after 2 numbers, but we thought that was good encouragement.

And 'Heartworm' is your second album, isn't it?
P: Yeah, the first one was called 'Submarine'. It's very hard to get now. It came out 3, 4 years ago now. It came out on a small independent Irish label, called Liquid Records which folded almost immediately after the band signed. The record was never really available anywhere. It came out sporadically, in tens, here and there, every so often. It just never had a decent release.

How's the UK tour been going so far?
Myles (bass): Very well. The crowd's have been really encouraging. It's been a big surprise from the last time we came around. It's been a big difference for us - we're putting on shows, and all the venues have been packed out. It's been great - really encouraging.

A few of the songs on the album are fairly intricate, with strings involved. Do you just not play those songs live?
P: There's two songs on that we don't do at the moment - but we've done them live in Dublin with a string quartet. Depending on how things go, we'd like to bring around a string quartet
M: The important thing is - the songs that are played - there's a different energy that goes into the band when we play live anyway. It's a lot more aggressive and in your face. There's different priorities for the live show as opposed to recording. Recording is more about timing. You're trying to represent it as best you can on record - forever. It would become very stale if you went out and played the record every night. People might as well stay at home.
P: A lot of spontaneity goes on in the live show. We don't inhibit ourselves on stage. We just write out a set-list and see what happens to it.

It appears from the soundcheck that you've expanded to a five piece.
M: Just for the live show. Because there were a good few guitar overdubs on the album - to represent the album to people as best we could, we needed an extra guitarist as part of the live show.

The last single, 'When We Were Young', was heavily promoted over here, and it received a lot of airplay. But it didn't do the business in the charts. Were you disappointed with that?
P: It got to 46, which is as close as we've got so far.
F: It's only our third single in
P: We can't really worry about that too much. The job of selling the record is the record company's.
F: The most important thing is the album
P: It's very disappointing when you see a lot of shit that is in the charts. From that point of view, it is a disappointment. We're interested in having some success because we need it to continue - to continue at a level that we like existing on as a band. Saying that, you can't really get too many headaches about it, 'cos it's not really your job. Out job is to write the songs. We know they're great songs, and we know they could be up there in the top 10 - any of the singles we've released are good enough when you see some of the songs that are in the charts.

So the success to keep going is more important than world domination.
P: It's always been the bands goal just to have another album
F: It's been packed at the gigs, it's going down fine at the moment
M: There's different ways of success, the chart isn't the only route
F: Sales are not the be all and end all of things when it comes down to it. The music's the be all and end all
M: Plus also, we haven't been over here doing anything. In Ireland the records about to go gold, and obviously it must have charted or what have you. In France the album came out last week, and sold something like 8 or 9 thousand copies in the first 4 days. Different places have different...there's a whole scene going on with the whole Britpop thing and we don't really sit into that. Maybe we'll find it a bit difficult because of that

Ferghal, do you write all the lyrics?
F: No.

Is it a collective band task?
P: Yeah, it's a band thing.

How well does 'When We Were Young' reflect your adolescence?
F: It's just the four of us together, sitting round a table basically.
P: That's probably the most co-operative of all the songs on the album, where all four of us got down and pitched in with little ideas from our youth and growing up. It's a fairly good representation - as good as you can expect to get in two and a half minutes
F: It's a good balance in two and a half minutes
M: You have to try and make a song that's interesting to the people who are listening to it. They're just little captions of things that we remembered. Wherever we go, it seems to be the common denominator between people we've met and ourselves, in that we can relate to little instances in some of the songs

One of the other songs on the single is the music to 'When We Were Young', but the lyrics are different, credited to Phil Lynott. How did that come about?
P: We were asked to do a Phil Lynott tribute gig two or three years ago. We were never big fans of Thin Lizzy, but we had this book of his poetry, and one of the poems is called 'Shades Of A Blue Orphanage', so we made our own music and put the poem to it. And after that the music is actually , as you know, the music is to 'When We Were Young', that actually inspired us to write 'When We Were Young'. The poem, 'Shades Of A Blue Orphanage' deals with his youth in the 50s, growing up in Dublin, so we kept the music, wrote 'When We Were Young', and just decided to put that on the b-side. It kind of throws a different light on the whole song.
F: Dublin in the 50s was like Dublin in the 80s
M: (Comments completely drowned out by Black Grape blaring over the bar's stereo - which has to be turned off)

So what did you think of the Thin Lizzy 10th anniversary thing, did you see it as exploitation of his legacy?
P: We actually played there - we played just that one song
M: It's not really exploitation. The only exploitation might have been in the fact that a lot of Irish bands, local bands kept that going for 10 years and all of a sudden there was a call for international acts. Some Irish bands that have been good supporters of the event for the last 10 years might not have got to play there. That was the only kind of downside. It was a good celebration, everybody turned out in their droves, and everybody seemed to be having a good time.
P: I think the whole point of it, you could see afterwards there were a lot of people who became friends during the time of Thin Lizzy, who got to meet for maybe the first time since then. It was good from that point of view.
M: It's not like the Sex Pistols getting back together. It was very much a one off.
F: It's been going for 10 years.
M: To understand it, you have to kind of understand the esteem that Phil Lynott is held in .
[Colm the drummer arrives]

Do you feel any affinity with the Irish music scene?
M: No, not really. We've never felt any affinity with any scene. We've always kept to ourselves and done our own thing, although there's some really good Irish bands at the minute, doing their own thing
P: That's the key word, doing their own thing. We want to do our own thing, and at the moment in Dublin, there's a lot of bands doing the same thing, just making CDs. It's very diverse, the music isn't all the same.

Ferghal, you've been critical in the press of Bill Gates [head of Microsoft] which seems an odd target, is their any reason for that?
F: No, I just don't like Bill Gates (laughs all round from the band)

Fair enough. And you've condemned the Pistols reformation, twice now.
M: I condemned the Pistols reformation - but that's cos I was asked. It seems to be very much a money thing - what has it got to say?
F: It's exactly what you described it as though.
M: I said it was, erm...

Jaws without the shark?
M: Yeah. Colm: For a lot of people, Sid Vicious was very much the Sex Pistols. F: Can you imagine John Lydon saying "have you ever got the feeling you've all been conned" again, a second time?

You think it's all just one big, final scam?
F: Yeah
M: A lot of people hold the Sex Pistols in great esteem.
P: It was the same with the Beatles. Just that whole thing, they should leave it alone.
F: It's a part of history. Let fucking history lie. Don't let it repeat itself. That's why I hate Bill Gates.

Can you explain you're concern with Ken Saro Wiwa?
F: He was a bloke from Nigeria, who got hung because of his beliefs. Shell Oil was fucking enslaving the whole tribe, and basically using them for their labour, for cheap labour, and destroying the environment as well.

Is that something you feel very strongly about?
F: Very much so. And the man - his own government killed him - because Shell Oil armed all the fucking police force, private armies and all that sort of thing. It's very dangerous.

What exactly is a Heartworm?
F: It's a disease which, erm...
M: Dog's get.
P: We just made up that title
M: We sort of made up the word Heartworm...
F (interrupts): It's in a medical dictionary
M (ignores Ferghal and continues): and we needed a name, we wanted to give people an indication of the type of songs that are on the album - what the songs deal with. A lot of the songs are about relationships, and a kind of bitterness.
P: Maybe the more melancholy side to relationships. We tried to give people an impression of the emotions that were going to be on the album, and hopefully what it would mean to us. We found out afterwards it was actually a dictionary word - a disease that affects the intestines of dogs.

Is there anything new in the pipeline from you, for 1996?
P: There's always something. The band's always writing.
F: We've got to tour America now, and tour Europe - and that's going to take up 3 or 4 months. And then we go back and do a bit of writing.

So writing and touring is an ongoing process.
M: Very much so.

How do you feel you've been treated by the Press?
F: Fine.
M: As well as can be expected. I think it's better than most.
C: We've been very lucky in the reviews that we've got. It's been very flattering.
M: The purpose of the press for us is informing people. It's the people that we want to get the message to. There's a lot of people that don't know Whipping Boy exist. As long as we can get the message to them, that we're out there, that's fine. That's the most important thing, giving people the opportunity to hear us. So that they can make up their minds rather than people making up their minds for them.

There's a lot of record industry people due to be here tonight - do you find that at a lot of your gigs?
P: It depends on the place. This and London will probably be the only two so far where this is the case. In Manchester...
F: It's because they all have to see us, you know what I mean, because we've never played over here before. They're all as curious as you are.

Looking around, you seem to have your own rider now. Does this mean you're on the way up?
P: It seems to be on this tour. It's the first time we've had anything. (band collapses into hysterics, muttering things about the support band)
F: Saying that, its a small rider. Basically just lemonade and stew
P: A couple of times when we came over, we slept on floors, so its great - we're very lucky.

So is it a lot of swank hotels now?
Scott from Sony: Do you want to come back and see the one they're staying in now.
P: What a lot of bands forget about when they tour is that its all their money. The record company will pay for the tour, but in the end, you pay it back - we're not going to go out and spend all or money on expensive hotels. A bed is a bed really.
F: No matter who's sharing.

Whipping Boy were talking to Nathan, in March 1996.