The Questionnaires are Jane Wade and Steve Hall. Featuring the cream of Tyneside session musicians, the music of their new album ‘Atlantic Ridge’ crosses Americana and intelli-pop. The Strange Brew speaks to Jane and Steve as they return to making music.
The band has a quite original name. What’s the story behind that?
Steve – After leaving the Eastside Torpedoes in 1984 I worked in commercial productions for a year or so, making jingles and incidental music. In 1985 I formed a band called The Resistance. We had a deal with a local record company, which – story of our lives – floundered before our album could be released. When we asked Jane to sing in a revamped version of the band in 1987, she thought the name was too crudely political. We kicked a few names around as we were writing new songs. By the time we had finished writing the first batch I had started a Social Science Degree. One day during a recording session, I said that I was sick of designing survey questionnaires and she said that sounds really 60s, like The Debonaires, so we stuck with it. We demoed the songs and were ‘Demo of the Year’ in a local music magazine. I spoke to a major record label about it and they were interested, but both of us had decided to change our careers, me into academia and Jane into theatre. It tore us apart, the most gut-wrenching decision to make. But we made it and stuck with it.
You’ve both had a long and varied career. How and when did you first meet?
Steve – I first saw Jane when she was singing in a club soul band in Newcastle around 1980-ish. She knocked me out – I just thought she was a great singer, one of the very best I had heard from up here. She had been a regular visitor to the Eastside Torpedoes’ then legendary Sunday lunchtime sessions in the Playhouse Theatre, Newcastle. When you hear her voice on the album or the video below you’ll know why I thought so highly of her, and she had heard me play guitar like this so the respect was mutual.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ffrAPGMgLM
For Jane, the club band was her bread and butter, but she was keener on writing original stuff. She formed an all-woman band called Jazawaki, which made records and did a lot of TV and radio, such as this.
Jazawaki split up in 1985. Jane moved on into theatre work with her own company Living Memory, mainly as Musical Director. My band The Resistance was falling apart after the record company disappointment, but we had a great sax player called Phil Walton, who eventually moved on to make a living on the London session scene. He knew Jane well, and in 1987 he suggested that we reform the band around her. That was the beginning of the first short-lived version of The Questionnaires.
Steve – what recollections do you have of former Jimi Hendrix manager Chas Chandler who produced the Eastside Torpedoes – and what, later, of his Animals’ bandmate, Hilton Valentine? How did they come into the picture?
Steve – It was the other way round. In the early 1970s I had played in a bluesy progressive rock band that included drummer Dave Storey, who eventually joined The Enid. Of course, there just weren’t enough gigs to sustain a band like that up here. I did various labouring jobs, steelworks, building sites and like, busked abroad in the South of France and played in a couple of North East club bands and folk duos. In 1978 I was spotted by local singer and owner of record company Blueport Records, Mike Maurice. He asked me to join a band called Roxoff, which he was putting together around ex-Animals guitarist Hilton Valentine. We did a few gigs around town and on the university circuit. Around then I first met Jim Hornsby, who was playing in a Blueport-signed band called American Echoes. They had an airplay hit called Las Vegas, but – again!!! – the company folded before Roxoff’s single, a cover of ‘Morning Dew’, could be recorded and released. Roxoff broke up and Hilton left to manage the Eastside Torpedoes, who had been runners-up in the Melody Maker contest in 1979 and had a contract with EMI.
Brian Johnson on vocals (having recently joined ACDC) with Steve on guitar at a charity gig featured the Eastside Torpedoes rhythm section at Blackhill Club in Consett, late 1981 or early 1982
EMI dropped the Torps in 1980 after they had sacked their whole A&R department to bring in younger people more in touch with the New Wave and New Romantic scenes. I was told that Spandau Ballet inherited our budget. Hilton persuaded me to join the Torps, who were going fully pro and had sparked the interest of Chas Chandler. We slogged around the country making a name for ourselves. We did some great gigs, including supporting Ray Charles at the Knebworth Jazz Festival in 1982.
In 1982 Chas brought us into his famous IBC Studios in London to record our album ‘Coast to Coast’. “Steve, put your amp in the lift-shaft” he said, “that’s where Jimi (Hendrix) got his best sound”. I was a bit overawed by all this but did the best I could. We were very disappointed with the album when it came out – the sessions were rushed and the mastering was poor. We had recorded live sessions that sounded better. Chas did his best, but to be honest he couldn’t put too much time into it because he knew that a 9-piece R&B band – expensive to take on tour – was not a commercial proposition in the middle of a music revolution moving away from R&B. Also, we had a lot of good songs, but we didn’t have that three minutes of magic that constitutes a hit.
The nearest the Torps got was an airplay hit in 1985, released by Volume Records, but by then I had left, mainly because I had grown tired of playing that type of music.
“A ‘comeback’ after all this time. We must be “crazy”; why ‘comeback’ now? What is different?
Steve – Three things, really.
One – The Questionnaires made a brief comeback 2001-2003, releasing an independent album called ‘Arctic Circles’. On it were the songs we had demoed in the 80s. We did it just to see what might have been, what our songs would have sounded like with decent production. It was released by a local record label, but – again!!! – the company folded. The album got virtually no serious promo, but we sold a few copies, mainly in the North East of England, and, for reasons I can’t work out, the Eastern seaboard of the USA and Los Angeles. But some of the songs on the album worked. Even though, with their 80s feel, they were of their time, we were encouraged.
Two – Jane and I kept on recording demos after that and thought that the new songs were better, and over the years I collected enough technology to upgrade my studio to nigh-on pro quality. We no longer needed to beg record companies to pay for studio time. We were deep into what had become successful careers in academia and acting, and of course parenthood – Jane and I had families, both with two kids – but we knew that one day we would record seriously again.
Three – in 2017 I took early retirement, and Jane’s acting career was winding down a bit. Multi-instrumentalist Jim Hornsby (Prelude, American Echoes, Martin Stephenson) and drummer Steve Dolder (Eastside Torpedoes, Prefab Sprout, Glenn Tilbrook, The Tempest) heard a demo of ‘Hide and Seek’ I had put on Facebook. Jim simply posted “brilliant” and Steve said, “it’s now or never, son, do it”. They persuaded us to do it, so we did. Crazy, I know, after all these years…. there’s a song there somewhere!
Jane – you have a very strong theatre background. What do you feel that this has brought to the songs that you and Steve have recorded – and, given your different musical experiences and influences, how do you go about collaborating on the writing of a song?
My time in theatre encouraged me to absorb many different musical styles from different eras and different parts of the world. You also have to develop a feel for atmosphere, and if there’s one thing listeners are saying, it’s that our songs have atmosphere. It also makes you think about interesting melodies and lyrics that tell stories, so, if you add all that to knowledge of songs across the generations and across the world, it helped make The Questionnaires’ songs what they are.
‘The Illustrated Woman’ is an interesting title. Please tell us about that song.
Jane – The lyrics developed from a story I heard from Steve. He had taken a friend suffering from depression to see a mental health professional. Steve was sitting in the waiting room as his friend was being seen when a young woman walked in. She had numerous tattoos. She had told the receptionist, who she obviously had got to know, that this was her last session, that she can’t thank everyone enough and that she felt great. She also had said that she might get rid of some of the tattoos. In my mind I pictured a young woman going through a tough time but coming through it. I wondered what the back story might have been, how did the tattoos get there, maybe to mark occasions in her life? Did she lose confidence, had she ‘found herself at last’ with the help of friends and professionals, maybe she no longer needed the external references and the dreams of being a different person in exotic places, that she had found her identity and confidence, and felt comfortable in her own skin. So, the song has a sad undertone, but the chorus is sort of happy and quietly confident, sort of ‘coming out of the woods’ at last. I have to say this is typical of the way we work – Steve is a wonderful chord-smith, and he often comes up with a hook, so with that platform I can come up with melodies and lyrics for verses, bridges and choruses. We write songs in the old-fashioned way – melody and harmony first, then ask the rhythm section to find a rhythm. Many songs today are written the opposite way round – ‘groove’ first and song second.
You describe ‘Arctic Circles’ as having a jazzier feel than the current album, which has more of an Americana vibe. Your earlier, individual musical routes to now are very diverse, how have these affected The Questionnaires ‘sound’? How would you describe that ‘sound’?
Jane – I would say that our sound is transatlantic – hence the album title ‘Atlantic Ridge’. It’s eclectic, mixing genres from across time and space, and as one Dutch reviewer said, the genres effortlessly blur in the songs. It starts off with ‘Heavy Heart’, which has an Americana/Surf feel about it, but by the time you reach the middle of the album you’re on the Northumberland border with Scotland, and by the end you could be anywhere – but hopefully back in Newcastle. Neither of us are keen on rigid genres and the way they are policed by ‘those who know’, so this is a classic crossover album, with allusions to styles in music and lyrics from across the world and across the generations.
Several of the other musicians on ‘Atlantic Ridge’ have impressive track records and all of you hail from that rich musical heritage in Tyneside that has given the world some hugely influential and critically acclaimed composers and music. How did you go about gathering these particular people around you for this album?
Steve – as we’ve seen, I met Jim Hornsby and Steve Dolder back in the day – Jim on the same record label and Steve in the same band. They knew we could cut it with a bit of encouragement and the right band. I had also worked with most of the other guys – Stephen P. Cunningham, Les Watts, Liam Fender, Roy Pearson – at various times in the recent past in studios or when I used to deputise on guitar for some of Tyneside’s local pub, club and function bands, which of course are still everyone’s bread and butter up here. That way I kept my hand in and didn’t get too rusty. Over the decades this NE scene has been the seedbed for some tremendous musicians. Jim introduced us to fiddle/mandolin player Niles Krieger, who has a tremendous reputation on the European Folk and Bluegrass scene. Jane and I were absolutely thrilled to be working with this lot – another local musician called The Questionnaires ‘the North East’s Wrecking Crew’.
Some of the recording was done remotely – something which has become the ‘norm’, given current times. What advantages do you feel that this provides – and what do you miss about having the other musicians in the same space?
The Questionnaires, Jane Wade and Steve Hall
Steve – Our method of working was tricky…. working in home or semi-commercial studios owned by some of our musicians, initial song sketches on vocal/acoustic guitar sent to the rhythm section, guide drums sand bass put on, everything redone again, add guide guitar and fiddle, percussion, organ, backing vocals, rough mixes bouncing back and forth, nobody happy, do it all again and on and on….. of course, COVID-19 knocked us onto the back foot for months. But we persevered – we worked out that if a record label had been paying for the time we all put into Atlantic Ridge it would have cost over a million quid. We missed being in the same space, but Jane and I recorded in my studio, and so did Niles and Jim, so there was a bit of togetherness to compensate for the remoteness. As it all came together, we began to enjoy it more and more. By the time we finished we all agreed that this was easily good enough for a commercial release.
‘Atlantic Ridge’, ‘Arctic Circles’ – there’s possibly a theme here. Was that intentional? Might we expect another geographical album title in future?
Both – ‘Arctic Circles’ was a title that expressed how we felt about our NE region in the 1980s as it being deindustrialised. Some of the songs were bleak, quite frankly, maybe too bleak and a little too political – although not party-political – for many listeners. We chose ‘Atlantic Ridge’ because it captured the transatlantic journey on which it takes the listener and also coincided with the geographical theme. Another album? Hopefully, but let’s see how this one does. We owe a lot to people like yourself who play and review independent music, what with the corporate stranglehold on mass media these days. Hopefully, we can avoid the next theme being the ‘Mariana Trench’ and find the money and energy to make another one.
Atlantic Ridge by The Questionnaires is available from: thequestionnaires.bandcamp.com
