Weyfest 2013: interview with Jet Black
At the age of 74 and with a music career that extends to almost 40 years, Jet Black could be forgiven for wanting to put down his sticks and call it a day, but ahead of The Stranglers’ 2013 tour, he tells Greg Bedson this is far from the case
“Every time I stop, I think to myself ‘what am I going to do?’ I get bored really quickly and the idea of doing nothing is horrible. When you’ve been doing something like this for so long, it kind of gets into the blood… it’s a bit of a drug really.”
A former businessman, Jet once owned a fleet of ice cream vans and an off license in Guildford, however after is wife left him in his mid thirties he decided that being a shopkeeper wasn’t how he wanted to spend the rest of his life.
“I have always been in to music and when I was younger I had considered being a professional musician, but everybody out there seemed to be better at it than I was and I just abandoned the idea.
“It was when I was in my 35th year that I suddenly realised there was something going on that I could participate in and that was when I decided to form a band.”
After a long process of auditions and figuring various things out, The Guildford Stranglers were formed in 1974. The band initially built a following within the mid-1970s pub rock scene, using one of Jet’s ice cream vans as a tour bus. “It was ideal for the job, it was a big square van, you could stand up in it and there was plenty of room for storage.”
Since the mid-1970s, The Stranglers have garnered a total of 24 Top 40 singles and 18 top 40 albums. Although the band has toured on a regular basis ever since their formation, Jet thought that he might have to put his drumsticks down for good in 2007.
“I was in hospital for three months with pneumonia, that was a nasty episode. I was lucky to get out of that alive. For a while I thought I might have to give up, the doctors thought it was going to be it full stop, but I somehow pulled through it.”
Fortunately Jet did pull through his health scare and having just completed a UK tour, the Stranglers are preparing to return to Surrey where they will be headlining at Weyfest.
“When we lived in Guildford, the local authority didn’t like us very much. . . I think they must have believed what they read in the News of The World.”
Having played at the festival before, Weyfest is a gig Jet is particularly looking forward to. “It’s got a really unique feel about it, I think It’s really cool. A lot of these festivals tend to have enormous fields and millions of people, this is much more intimate.”
The Stranglers will be performing at Weyfest on Friday August 30, for tickets visit http://www.weyfest.co.uk/
