Live music and touring are on lockdown right now and fans as well as artists are going through withdrawals. We wanted to come up with something fun to help bridge that distance between fans and artists right now. What we came up with is something called The Lockdown Lowdown and it’s a Q&A session with fun questions for artists to answer. They’re not your typical interview questions, so it gives you a peek inside of the artists themselves. We’re big music nerds here at I’m Music Magazine and we love learning things like this about the artists that we love. We’re pretty sure that you’ll get a kick out of these, so we hope you’ll take the time to read them. In this installment, we spoke with Lee Heir of UK rockers Prime (UK Band)!
How have you been doing during the pandemic and how are you spending your time?
Lee Heir/Prime (UK Band): I’ve been working an office job since I ended Prime last December to get some money together, and start working on a new music project to get some new songs together. I don’t like people so it hasn’t affected me too much in that sense! Obviously not seeing my family has been crappy, and I didn’t get to go to my nan’s funeral in April which wasn’t a great thing.
Have you been working on new music?
We’ve decided to release two more posthumous singles as Prime (UK Band), one is a song by our guitarist Chris D. Bramley called ‘Sorry’ that we recently performed on Notts TV and a song of mine entitled ‘Jeff Took A Trip’, inspired by the Michael Caine film Get Carter, which is one of my favourites.
What are five albums that changed your life?
Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars, as Bowie opened up a new world of music for me; Lou Reed’s Berlin as I was obsessed with him and he influenced my vocal style a lot. Ian Dury’s New Boots and Panties and Sex Pistols’ Never Mind The Bollocks got me into punk for which I’m forever grateful. I would also add The Best of The Byrds to that as it made me want to get into harmony vocals and that made me want to add that style of music to our sound.
Who are five artists that influenced you as a musician?
The Doors, The Clash, Public Image Limited, The Rolling Stones, and I’d add one of the 70s holy trinity of Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed in there too.
What are your five favorite live albums?
Suicide’s 23 Minutes Over Brussels is complete madness with the audience close to a riot (which happened later on as Elvis Costello stormed off the stage due to their treatment of his supporting act), Jerry Lee Lewis Live at the Star Club, Bob Dylan Live at the Albert Hall 1966, David Live by David Bowie, and Sex Pistols Live at Winterland ’78. All magical albums in their own way.
Life on the road; what are five of your craziest/funniest/scariest tour stories?
We had a mad night in Cardiff, Wales supporting our friends Bandicoot, and the start of the gig went ominously after I sliced my hand on a bit of broken glass on the bar. After getting through the show and putting on a decent performance, 4 or 5 pints later we went out to some well ropey bars. Finally we found somewhere good, a nightclub with some good rock music… Unfortunately a local challenged our drummer Zero on the dance floor to down his pint to the sound of Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. Zero downs it in one then looks at the guy and spits the beer smack bang in his face. Obviously, he got kicked out, and we carried on the night and met four burly looking fellas in pinstripe suits who held their pint glasses over their heads to “stop our beers from spilling”. I wrote some lyrics in my new song – a re-write of our past single ‘Bye Bye’ about this. It also mentions our bassist sleeping in a hotel laundry room in Italy because he got locked out of our room… Well he didn’t actually get locked out, the door was actually unlocked, he just didn’t realise. He’d met some Italian girl in a bar and disappeared down an alleyway with her somewhere on the streets of Pisa, so he enjoyed himself anyway!
Our past bassist Danny Ison was a bit of a wild man, and not always the most reliable! There were a few nights where we weren’t sure if he was playing bass for us or not, and we spent a fair few hours waiting outside the big white transit van for him before telling our rhythm guitarist Alex Hudson: “You’re on bass tonight mate!” After one particular show that Dan was promoting, our bass guitar – paid for by me – went awol! Eventually … 2 years after he’d left the band, I managed to get the money back, with loads of hassle. He’s got a lovely girlfriend who’s got him on the right track now thankfully! (Laughs)
We had also played Stockholm, Sweden, with our friends in a band called The Blue Ruin, and as much as we had a great time on the trip, we came back and realised that just a few months later a band from the North of England called Viola Beach had died after their car fell 80 feet over a bridge near the city centre. People in the industry were shocked that a band just out there enjoying themselves playing in another country would come to such a horrible end. Their single ended up getting to number one, and as much as that’s lovely it doesn’t bring them back and I certainly wouldn’t swap with them.
We did a short tour of West Germany, and our accommodation fell through on night due to our friend’s house having a big leak on the night of the gig – which strangely was in a church – so we picked a nice hotel right near the train station after arguing and debating the cost for what seemed like an eternity in the early hours of the morning…. But I won the argument once we realised our train to Holland wouldn’t get us there until late the next day! Luckily the German bookers had really liked us so we had enough money for a hotel, late-lunch and breakfast so that was all good, and meant we got to see a city we never would have seen.
And, on that same trip, we headed to Rotterdam to play in a hostel in town… as I walked down to the bar to play I noticed a Dutch dude butt naked stood in the doorway of a room. After a couple of seconds, I thought well, this is Holland. Then, we got up to play, 2 songs into the set 4 completely naked Dutch dudes ran onto the stage and started dancing about, before trashing a pinball machine and running down the street never to be seen again! It was pretty difficult to recover the music after that to be honest, the whole set revolved around bad dick jokes.
What are your five favorite movies?
One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, John Cassavete’s Shadows, Eric Rohmer’s Pauline At The Beach, The Shining and The Deer Hunter. I’m a huge film buff so that one was hard.
What’s the best and worst advice you ever heard?
Worst? “Don’t play funk” by a singer who wasn’t fit to lace my shoes. Best? My musician friend Roger Portas said: “Don’t trust anyone apart from yourself to get the job done in music.” Maybe I took that a little bit too literally at times.
What’s the strangest thing you ever autographed?
I can’t remember autographing any strange things but we did once stick a Prime logo sticker on someone’s arse!
If music was over today and you had to go into professional wrestling, what would your wrestling name be?
Well, I grew up as a kid watching the likes of Steve Austin and the NWO, and people like Bret Hart and Curt Hennig, so I already had a wrestling name in homage to the latter – ‘Mr Perfect’… I used to wear a light blue t-shirt with “The Perfectionist” painted on it in Tippex – and also black cycling shorts which the girls used to flip up my t-shirt to look at too. I was damn cool let’s face it. I also had a fingerless black leather glove confiscated in my gym class too by the gym teacher… the black glove is also a wrestling tradition. Blackjack Mulligan, ‘Big Sexy’ Kevin Nash and all that.
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