Just got back 2,000 words from Russell 'n' Ralph answering my questions. It's about 60% Russell. He's very, very candid in it and refreshingly open to answering all of my questions (which is especially surprising as some of them were quite confrontational!). I even got in a few questions about the Wicker Players - some of which he brought up himself.
In keeping with the nature of Interviews with Russell, the finished article will be ready for the public for Easter 2014 and will be available from Fat Dan's Record Shack in Wakefield, Dan's Phat Records in Wick, Shack up with Dan's Records on the Wirral and Fat Dan's Shaqing Records in Wavertree.
Hopefully within a month. I'm laughably crap at typing up interviews I've recorded (three years and counting from an interview I did with Doctor Who #6!) but this should be easier as it's all typed.
It's going to be on God Is In The TV Zine website and in fairness to the fact that it was under their auspices I got the interview, it'll appear there and only there for the time being in order to give them the traffic they deserve.
And yes, there's the option of a follow up in person.
A teaser. Russell on his backstage demands last year: "Where are my Kumquats, peasant?!"
I've spent the first 600 worsd of this article going on about how amazing Russell is. This seems fair enough to me. If anyone has any good stories relating to Russell's idiosyncracies then please feel free to flag them up and I'll try and shoehorn them in in an attempt for the readers to remember/discover that Pulp really is about much more than Jarvis.
Just a quick story, not really very useful, but one which I feel exemplifies the Pulp ethos to always be "On". The first time I saw Russell in the Leadmill I said to my friend 'that's Russell from Pulp over there, I'm gonna go talk to him'. Russell was wearing a fairly restrained outfit, compared to the pastel blue vinyl coat he'd worn at a recent show. I sauntered up nervous as hell and said 'Hi, Russell' some small chit chat followed and I found him to be incredibly friendly with a neat line in bone dry humour. I remarked on how he wasn't wearing his trademark sunglasses at which point his right hand whipped up to his suit jacket breast pocket and he pulled out a pair of extraordinary sunglasses and said 'I always come prepared'. Just a little thing but one I always think about when I read interviews with Russell.
