The Lime Spiders - And You Thought It Was A Drink
The Lime Spiders have been around for nearly 30 years and have enjoyed one of the most successful punk careers in Australian music. They have been covered by bands like the Goo Goo Dolls, and have been requested as support acts for MC5, Tool and the Black Crowes. With the release of their new album, Live at the Esplanade, A Fine Line caught up with Richard Lawson to discuss live records, Spinal Tap and ELO.
First things first, the Lime Spiders “never broke up, we’ve been playing on and off constantly, just people live in different areas of the country now. Contact with the band is all via email and the internet now, but we have been coming out and playing about twice a year at the moment. We’re playing a lot at the Annandale in Sydney, it’s going off that place, we played there January and the place was packed and it was just awesome”.
According to Lawson, live music is making a strong comeback “it goes in waves, the late 80’s were fantastic, you’d go to Strawberry Hills in Sydney and there’d be brilliant bands 7 nights a week, you wouldn’t get that now, you only get it 6 nights a week”. This is not to say that Sydney’s live scene is the best in Australia, “Melbourne and Sydney have always been tussling as far as live scene goes and when it’s not happening in Sydney its pretty happening in Melbourne and vice versa.”
With a 30 year career under their collective belts, Lawson admits that there has been the odd Spinal Tap moment, “in Atlanta when we were touring America the band had a slight nervous breakdown, we got back into the tour bus after it, and we were just all feisty and cussing and we were about to explode or implode or something, we had the video of Spinal Tap with us, and the tour manager saw what the problem was and put it on, and suddenly we all just stopped and started watching Spinal Tap and burst out laughing and that was it. The whole thing fixed itself”.
To pay homage to Spinal Tap, Lawson reveals that the Lime Spiders have “always had a joke that we were going to come out and play 'Tonight I’m Going to Rock You Tonight' as the first song and we actually have played Gimme Some Money at sound checks. Mick does it really well, he’s got the stutter down pat”.
Live at the Esplanade is not the first live recording that Lime Spiders have done but it is the first one that hasn’t been added to in the studio “what you see is what you get on that live CD, every single song [from the set] is on the CD. There is nothing left off”. The set was recorded on the 25th of January 1997 at Melbourne’s historic Esplanade Hotel and Lawson remembers that was a special show because they “knew it was being recorded, that’s what was so special about it, we were all just going this is it, this is it, this is it, during sound check we were going any mistake is just going to be – OH MY GOD - and we were filming some of it as well so we just knew, we knew it was being taped”. This makes the set list even more significant, “I think we’re a bit older, a bit wiser, and just know when to attack and when not to attack. It’s not what you play; it’s what you don’t play. The silences between our songs are really profound!”
One of the best things about the being in the Lime Spiders would have to be the opportunities they’ve been given by the Australian media. A few times “Triple J in Sydney and also in Adelaide and Melbourne let us take over the radio station and play our own songs. That’s always dangerous with the Lime Spiders because we just get stuck into the record collection. Mick and me are really daggy sometimes and pull out Moody Blues or something like that and burst into song, really daggy stuff”. But it gets daggier; Richard’s favourite band is “ELO. The band actually threatened to throw me out at one stage I took the greatest hits on tour. I wear my heart on my sleeve and I’m not afraid to say it. That’s the daggiest one. I’ve been wanting for them to come back in vogue, but I don’t think they were in vogue to start with”.
So punters, we can definitely expect more from the Lime Spiders as they just “love it still, the band is stronger than the sum of its parts. It’s got this real force about it”. And in regards to new material? “We’re discussing it.”
Rock and roll!
The Lime Spiders Live at The Esplanade is available now through Figtree.
