Press and Interviews

In April 1983, seven months after coming to blows with MES in an Australian nightclub, Marc Riley formed his own independent record label, In Tape Records and began his solo career.

His first single 'Favourite Sister' featured Steve Hanley, Paul Hanley and Craig Scanlon. The second single 'Jumper Clown' (an instrumental version of which had been used during Riley's tenure with The Fall during 1979) featured Pete Keough (bass) and Paul Fletcher (guitar). Both singles were released under the name 'Marc Riley'. Within months Eddie Fenn joined on drums and the band was christened 'Marc Riley with the Creepers'.

The band was an instant John Peel favourite and recorded five Peel Sessions between 1983 and 1987; all but five of the tracks were released commercially. Ultimately though, they failed to make much impression on the record-buying public; as Marc Riley was later to remark 'the Creepers are failed stadium rockers'.

Riley was an enigmatic front man but interviews with him at the time indicate that his opinions were disastrously out of step with the times and his outspoken views on CND and the miners dispute did the band few favours. His lyrics were an eccentric composite of Bernard Manning, Peter Cook, William Burroughs, Lenny Bruce and Tommy Cooper while the dense chords and jerky music owed a great deal to the Velvet Underground, Captain Beefheart, The Stooges, T-Rex and Kraftwerk. As one reviewer wrote early in their career, 'Does he expect to sell more than 1,000 copies?' A commercial proposition they were not.

Throughout the Creepers' too-short career Riley delighted in attacking his musical contemporaries. A few samples of his mordant wit include:

'Well I wish I was the prophet of shite poor storyteller like the Bard of Woking
Dim-wit Weller, dim-wit Weller
Who loves the Queen and who votes Tory?
Come on joker read us a story'
(Bard of Woking)

'I take mascara, lipstick and rouge
Baddy trousers patent leather shoes
Carmen rollers and a whining voice
I listen to The Cure by choice'
(Cure By Choice)

'Dare to dance on an Aussie floor, bloody nose, bloody poor (X2)
'Cos you're a jumper clown
Here, this sounds like Mark Smith, sounds like The Fall, I'm going home
(Jumper Clown, Warts 'n' All)

He also took pot-shots at celebrities and media types several years before Half Man Half Biscuit made a career of it:

'Everyone hates Melvyn Bragg even those with a nasal whine
Everybody hates Bob Monkhouse the home of tearjerk slime'
(Wanna Cocktail Hate Tale)

'Rolf Harris, bearded buffoon and entertainer of the vegetable mass
Come not near me with thy wobble board thou unspeakable demon and evil seducer of two little boys' (Rolf)

After a handful of singles, which Riley would rightly describe as 'indie classics', the band released their first album proper. 'Gross Out' features moments of outlandish comic invention and begins with a line that I'd nominate as the finest of any album I own:

'Why does a head like a boiled egg make Joe shit himself?'
(Make Joe)

My favourite track on the album is 'Earwig O' Dowd'. Once again it features extra-curricular duties from Paul and Craig and a fine narration courtesy of Steve Hanley:

'When first I encountered Harry O' Dowd
His suit didn't fit him, his fashion was loud
I noticed both trouser legs were full, they were wide
It seemed there were more than two legs inside
In the temple Inn I sat and stared at the gloved hand of Harry O' Dowd
Where the black leather finished, flesh didn't start
Instead I saw a black hairless arm marked
I'd heard the story, the lie sounded so big
Of the local man, well, half man, half earwig,
Whose wife had a chest, not soft feminine
But with black shiny armour which stretched to her chin

The tale was a favourite at last orders in Temple
Told by them all, the angry, the gentle
Dismissed in an instant, the tale it was good
But not taken as true with all this ale in my blood
'Til one day in garden over fence I was asked
Into O' Dowd's house for a nip of his flask
My first impression of house was okay
'Til I noted there was no sign of carpet, the floor was peat coated
Into the floor was a tunnel, a hole, which sank into the earth where his wife sat alone
O' Dowd introduced himself, well-mannered, sincere
He shook my hand as I took his pincer'

This sense of absurdist humour was to receive full rein in coming years with Riley's regular 'Harry the Head' strip in 'Oink' comic.

The centrepiece of the album is 'Gross', a song, which has always made me feel queasily uncomfortable and had me rushing quickly for the volume control on the stereo:

'Fuck off the old romantics
Fuck off depraved sexual antics
... You see I've always been a smooth-talking fucker'
(Gross)

According to the sleeve notes their second album, 'Fancy Meeting God' was 'recorded and mixed in 12 mins at a cost of 4 pounds 59 pence'. This album gets a worse press than any other Creepers release but it definitely has its pleasures. Judas Sheep, Wanna Cocktail Hate Tale, Down in the Bunker and Fly the Nest are indispensable tracks but truth be told, the rest of the album is unremarkable.

After this below-par release the band were re-christened The Creepers and bounced back with their best album yet, 'Miserable Sinners'. The title was borrowed from Derek and Clive's song, 'Jump' with the lines 'Jump! You fucker, jump ... we are miserable sinners, Fi-i-ilthy fuckers'.

A change in personnel with Phil Roberts and Mark Tilton replacing Pete Keough and Paul Fletcher marked a considerable maturity in the sound of the band. Musically the tracks were more melodic with layered arrangements and a degree of musical accomplishment that was previously lacking.

From the opener the lyrics were as good as always:

'Prior warning to all Mrs Gliders about the man who's going to end up inside her'
(The Adventures of Brian Glider)

But this time around the lyrics were more reflexive particularly on tracks such as 'Honest Lies' and 'Sound as a Pound':

'You know I try to be original, have my own sound
I don't run my VU records into the ground
I know that I'm no Captain Beefheart or Groucho Marx but I place myself above the mainstream, up with the sparks
But I, yes I, yes I, I'm sound as a pound'
(Sound as a pound)

The album also featured The Creepers' biggest hit, a cover of Brian Eno's 'Baby's on Fire'.

Their last album 'Rock 'n' Roll Liquorice Flavour' is another leap for the band with the addition of Simon Taylor on guitar. The sound is even more refined and there is a pervasive air of bitterness, regret and black, twisted humour. The finest track has to be the fantastic 'Bastard Hat':

'It's been one of those things,
You know the scene
I was the fastest the company dream
Daddy always told me there'd be somebody faster
A sharper wit, a bigger bastard'
(Bastard Hat)

AND it has an accordion solo.

The song that sets the dark mood of the album though is the disturbing 'Derbyshire':

'Men masturbate in saloon cars full of dog ends, their kipper ties dangle, they smell of yoghurt
Insects roam their bodies, crawl in through cracks in the cranium and lay their eggs in the id
They smirk at the source of it all'
(Derbyshire)

The last single release was 'Brute' possibly the most annoying song ever written. I can't help feeling that Riley released this single purely out of malice. There's also an unnecessary 6 minute remix version ... the band split early in 1988 with claims of a 'stabbing incident'.

In 1989 there was a 26-track compilation called 'Sleeper'. It's a reasonable selection but serious omissions such as 'Location Bangladesh' (from 'Creeping at Maida Vale'), 'Pollystiffs' (single release only), 'Black Dwarf' (from '4 A's from Maida Vale') and 'Lucky' (B-side of 'Brute') mean that it really can't be regarded as a substitute for the original releases.

If you'd like to get hold of The Creepers' material, the process is complicated by the fact that there has never been a re-issue programme. Marc Riley, believing that his best work was with The Fall, has apparently refused to sanction release of any of The Creepers' back-catalogue. Your best bet would be to try eBay or your local second-hand record emporium.

(Pseud Mag: No. 1, December 2004, pp34-35)