Charley Stone is beloved, not just as an amazing musician, but mention her name to anyone who knows her, or has worked with, and they cannot wait to tell you what a brilliant person she is. She’s been a Frantic Spider, played in Toxic Shock Syndrome, joined Salad and been the touring guitarist of choice for bands like Sleeper, Desperate Journalist, Keith Top of the Pops and His Minor UK Indie Celebrity All-Star Backing Band, as well performing with side-hustle The Fallen Women (the all-female Fall Karaoke band). Now she has her own band and an album on the way. Writer Aitch Nicol got together with Charley for this Joyzine interview.
A few days after the release of the second single, ‘Better With You‘, from her debut solo album, Here Comes the Actual Band (released 29th May 24), I met with Charley Stone, indefatigable indie scene queen with a musical CV as long as your arm, gigging guitarist with Sleeper and Desperate Journalist, and honest to goodness Duran Duran enthusiast. Charley spoke with me from a fancy house that does not belong to them (due to house sitting, not burglary), about the nature of time, how she learned let go and make space for creativity, her deep love for the band Panic Pocket, and (possibly) being haunted by Mark E. Smith.
Here’s a warm-up question then. If you could be a packet of crisps, what crisps would you be and why?
I don’t even like crisps *laughs*. And I don’t want to be eaten. But people are weird, people like crisps don’t they. If I HAVE to be a packet of crisps, I want to be a bespoke, hand made packet of crisps, made for somebody special, made with love and eaten with love.
What initially inspired you to make music and what continues to inspire you?
When I first started making music, I wanted an escape from real life. My favourite band was Duran Duran. They were like an art project that become a pop band and I really liked their aesthetic. They’d created their own ideal world. And I wanted to do that. Then I went through a phase in my early twenties, when I was on the edge of fame, and I realised I really didn’t want that
So your initial intention, to escape using music, led to a fame you were uncomfortable with – how did you deal with that, did you change direction?
Well I was in a band that were starting to get famous, and I was starting to get recognised, and I hadn’t realised that was what was happening. I was just walking around central London feeling paranoid. And I realised I definitely did not want to be visibly famous, and reassessed what I wanted, and where I wanted the music I was already completely invested in creatively, to take me in my life.
I realised, over the years, that what I actually love about music, and performing, is the sequential nature of it, with layers weaving in and out, that at once roots you in time, but also takes you outside of time, simultaneously. The particular way music grounds you in time, but also expresses and communicates emotions and thoughts, it’s as if you’re outside of time and outside of language – you’re in both places, in one moment.
So you changed your approach entirely?
Yes, absolutely. When I was young, I was very much a planner. When I saw guys jamming in music shops, I always felt they were very lazily letting their hands take them somewhere, according to predefined patterns that they learned. It made me think I’m never doing that. I’m always going to find the sound I want to make, in my head, and then figure out how to play it. So everything had to be done in advance, in my head. And then I met Keith Top of the Pops.
With him, there’s no rehearsals, you literally get a list of chords a couple of days before a gig. When I first played with him, I told him I felt like I was just making noises, and he said “the thing to remember Charley Stone, is when that happens, it’s probably my favourite bit”. And that totally freed me up. And these days I’m the opposite of a planner, I have an idea of what I’m going to do, but I deliberately leave a lot to chance now.
That makes me think of learning to let go, when you’re painting.
Yes, a good analogy, because I don’t paint, but I draw, and I hadn’t drawn until a few years ago. I had this thing in my head saying “I’m not good at art”. Then I realised that was a stupid thing to say to myself, because certainly as far as music goes, a lot of the stuff that I love is the most shambolic, the most lacking in technique, so why do I feel any different about drawing. Now I draw, and I have this thing where I have to trust the line, follow the line, and that make it something that I like. I can’t plan drawing, I’d get bored if I sketched first, then used ink. Where’s the fun in that?
Do you feel your music is linked with your art?
It’s linked in the sense that there’s a narrative that runs through all the things that I make. My songs and my drawings come from this quite whimsical, almost dream world. When I started doing solo music, I realised I could make the cover art myself, and it all ties in, but also makes it clear this is self-produced, not something branded and marketed. Something that someone has made, personally.
So what made you decide to go solo? Are you also with a band?
Well I do gigs and recordings solo, but I wanted to also do stuff with a band. I like the collaborative nature of working with other musicians. And with going solo, I guess I just felt the time was right – I never had a desire to be a solo musician, but some kind of shift happened, all my experiences with bands and music styles, it was synthesising into something inside me that I now need to do.
Like a lot of people whose artistic endeavours are coming to fruition, this started in lockdown. I’d been doing Facebook live things, where I’d just pick up a guitar, sing a few songs and have a chat with people. I enjoyed it but it was also really nerve-wracking, and I liked that. I don’t get nervous on stage, I’ve been doing it for years, so this was something new. It gave me a real adrenaline rush. It was terrifying, and a challenge, and it made me want to do solo gigs.
With the band, part of my mission statement for myself, was that I’m really against the idea of a definitive version of a song. I like the way songs can evolve, like folk music always did over the centuries. So sometimes I want to do a song completely solo, sometimes bring it to a band. But rather than giving them the bass line or whatever, I say “here’s a song, how are you going to respond to it”. Because this is my project, I’m ultimately being the director. If I don’t like something I can ask them to try something else. I could sit down and do the entire arrangement myself, but what’s really exciting to me, is what someone else brings to it. I feel it’s no coincidence that the great people, like Bowie, or Prince, created their best albums when they worked with a band.
So I wonder, if you could collaborate with any artist, alive or dead, who would that be
Well actually, it wouldn’t be Prince, or David Bowie, it would be Nick Rhodes, keyboard player from Duran Duran. He was the one with the real creative vision and drive to make them the best band. I love the way he uses textures. To kick off our collaboration I’d ask him to recreate, from memory, the Seven and the Ragged Tiger album, but in the style of The Fall. I know something really different for me would come out of a collaboration with Nick Rhodes and I’d be interested to see what that was.
Going back to the gigging, what’s been the strangest or most surprising thing that’s happened to you at a gig?
Well a strange thing happened at the Lexington not so long ago, before a Fallen Women gig (an all-female Fall karaoke band). I was on stage sound checking. There was tension in the air, and as I’m trying to sort something out, this feedback starts. It gets louder and louder, and we couldn’t work out where it was coming from. And we realised it was coming from the room, high up on the walls. The sound engineer said “well I’ve worked here for years, and I’ve never heard that sound”. I went downstairs to find the bar manager, and as I go down, the sound follows me. It was so loud we had to leave the room. We were all stood around, joking that it’s the spirit of Mark E. Smith. I don’t know what possessed me, but I went to the mic and said “Spirit in this room, we hear you, we acknowledge you, we’d be really grateful if you’d calm down so we can do our soundcheck” and the noise slowly faded to silence. And that was the strangest thing that’s happened at a gig.
Do you believe in spirits? Are you that way inclined?
Well I definitely sense things. We were talking about neurodivergence earlier, and whether you call it neurodivergence, or having a very open, receptive, childlike brain, I feel like a very finely tuned antenna. But what I’m tuning into, I don’t know. You probably feel like that too right (as a neurodivergent person)?
Yeah, and it’s knackering, but when you can give yourself the space to connect to it…I just wish we didn’t have to do “life things”, that get in the way of eternally connecting.
Well I’ve engineered my life so that I don’t have to do “life things” a lot of the time. Some years ago, I made my outgoings as small as they could be. I’ve got the tiniest flat in existence. In the past, if I’d felt like I hadn’t done much on any given day, I would have beaten myself up for it. But I was reading a post by a friend on performing productivity, and I feel my existence in the last few years has been a rebellion against performing productivity. And I feel very privileged to be able to do that.
If you could change one thing about the music industry, what would it be and why?
This will annoy some people, but I would utterly destroy the Brit School. When I was young, being in a band was one of the few creative outlets where anyone could do it. Coming out of punk, and the pop stuff that came out of post-punk, it felt like, if you’ve got an idea, you can just do it. It was accessible to almost anyone. Now you’ve got a great big institution in Croydon, where people in the catchment area can go to that school, and get all the contacts, but growing up in any other part of the country, you’ve immediately got a load of extra barriers to getting into music. Can’t we have that in every school? I appreciate it helps some kids, but it really pisses me off that it exists. Let’s not put all that money into a Brit School, lets invest the money in arts, across the country.
Thinking about new music, do you a favourite new band or artist?
Well my favourite band, and I mean proper favourite, like when I was a teenager, is Panic Pocket. They’re two best friends, one plays keyboard, one plays guitar. They’re like a feminist, 2020’s version of the novelist Barbara Pym. They write really wryly observational songs that have a fragile charm to them. They’re like the quiet girl in the corner that just said something really clever and funny and nobody noticed. They’re very indie. Their songs are about things like hating your boss, like resisting the need to have an ambition. Almost every time I’ve seen them, at some stage in the set, I well up, I want to fall down. I can’t express why they have that affect on me. It’s like someone you fall in love with – objectively you know they’re not the most beautiful person in the world, but there’s something about them that connects with you in a way that’s inexplicable and makes you insensible to everything else. And that’s how I feel about Panic Pocket.
And finally, if you If you could give any aspiring musicians one piece of advice, what would it be?
Well it would depend what they are looking for? I know what advice I wouldn’t give them – I get so irritated when people who are asked this question – and this is often by people who are very successful themselves – say “just work really hard and believe in yourself”. That is such a load of bollocks. I would just say, if you like playing music, do it. Don’t be a dick to people. Fun stuff will happen, just not necessarily the stuff you were expecting. But that’s the secret to life anyway isn’t it, if you’re not a dick to people, and you’re open to people and new experiences, then surprising things happen.
Charley Stone’s debut solo album. Here Comes The Actual Band will be released on 29th May 2024.
Singles released from the album:
Charley Stone socials: Website | Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram | X (Twitter)
Interview by Aitch Nicol
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