INTERVIEW:  Dave Sharp Nov 28th 1990

Note:   This is a pretty good interview.  It was not done on the radio,
	but taped backstage, before one of Dave Sharp's solo performances.
        It was sent to me attached to the end of a live Dave Sharp show
        from 1990.  The interviewer is intelligent, and besides a couple
        of slips, he lets Dave Sharp speak his mind.

	I believe the interviewer's name is Rich, but I'm not sure
	so he is designated by "I:".

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I:      "Umm, you got time for just a couple of questions"

Dave:   "Ah, what, on tape?"

I:      "Yeah"

Dave:   "Sure, yeah, listen, umm, why don't...why don't you cats leave
	 me alone with this guy and we'll talk"

Voices: "Yeah,...yeah"

(Door opens)

Voice:  "Five..."

(Door Closes)

Dave:   "...Rich"       

I:      "Thanks" (sounds really nervous)

Dave:   "All right...so yeah, this is my first ah..."

I:      "First solo...tour (sounds even more nervous)

Dave:   "Yeah, yeah"

I:      "'Cause I heard about a couple of dates, you had done..."

Dave:   "Yeah Well..."

I:      "...around Earth Day of last year"

Dave:   "That's right, yeah well that was when I was over there..."

I:      "...that was in Boston..."

Dave:   "...on a, I was a, I just came over on a writing trip 
         essentially, and umm..."

I:      "To write...in America?"

Dave:   "Yeah, you know, I'd never come to New York before (stammers),
	 other than just playing concerts, and you breeze through town,
	 and, umm you know, I thought, it's the one place I've never 
         been to, to just sort of be for a while.  I thought, wow, you
         know umm..."

I:      "You like it?"

Dave:   "Oh, I loved it, I did.  On the plane on the way over when I was 
         first coming, I was thinking 'Is this the right move?, it this
         the right decision? What's going on?'  And I landed, and I
         thought 'Wow, this is great'.  You know, there is so much energy
         in this town, so much positive energy.  People, right now, are up,
         they're writing, they're playing, they're singing, you know,
         everybody is doing something, and it is a really positive time
         here in the city."

***
Note:  Coming up next only major black mark on this otherwise good 
       interview.
***

I:      "Yeah, I...I don't know, I'm actually in a band myself, and umm, 
         things aren't so hot, 'cause, you know you say lots of things
         are happening, but you know, we've...we're going without a
         bassist, cause we just can't find anybody..."

Dave:   (Sounding a little put off) "yeah, yeah, yeah..."

I:      "...you know, we go through them like water.  (Quickly changes 
         the topic)  I just wanted to know if ah, you could just
         elaborate on the new album coming out, anything you can tell us?"

Dave:   "Yeah, the, it's umm, what we've done is, ah, we've just come 
         out of the studio, and umm, we've put together a chronology of
         the band's history umm, from now right back ah when we first came
         over in 1983, with those indubitable Irishmen..."

I:      "(laughs)...you don't have to mention their names"

Dave:   (laughs)

I:      (laughs)

Dave:   "...and what we did was ah, at the same time we recorded 3 new 
         songs for that, which is, one of them is currently out on the
         radio now..."

I:      "Yeah, I'd heard it..." 

Dave:   "...The Road..."

I:      "...yeah, I like that."

Dave:   "...and at the same time, we recorded a whole other album, ah, 
         which we produced ourselves, which is coming out in the new year
         when we get together to go on tour again, right about April, May
         of next year, and in the meantime, ah, I'm going to be recording
         an album, ah, over here in the States, ah, an acoustic album, umm,
         with a guy called Bob Johnson, whose going to produce it for me,
         and, a, that's going to be out in January, and it, I mean
         (laughs), and then I'm gonna be on the road in January, February,
         March promoting it, so I'm mean ah..."

I:      "So you'll be on tour, basically just straight through when the 
         Alarm go back on tour..."

Dave:   "I'm a, I'm a busy camper right now let me tell you that 
         (laughs)"

I:      (laughs)

Dave:   "There's a lot going on."

I:      "So these are just, you're actually doing a tour now, or is it 
         just like..."

Dave:   "This is, ah, yeah this is the end of a small tour of the U.S., 
         up and down the East Coast, I've just been playing with Suzanne
         Vega, and I did a show in the Townhall in New York, with Marianne
         Faithful which was ah which was great, and ah, ah, you know, ah,
         th-this is a, after that I went out to the West Coast, and this
         is the end of the tour...umm, and right after this...I'm going to
         be recording the new album."

I:      "So you will be doing lots of stuff from that tonight then. "

Dave:   "Oh yeah, most certainly, I'm going to be playing just about 
         everything that's going to be on the record, yeah."

I:      "Well that's good, that's good to hear, umm, I heard ah, you 
         said you just made a chronological compilation, I heard something
         of ah, a full b-sides album...is there any truth to that?"

Dave:   "There's been some talk of doing something like that, but we've 
         put that project on hold for a while because we've literally been
         so busy ah, putting together the chronology album and recording
         the new album, ah, we just haven't had time to do that, yet, I
         figure that is a project that we will probably do sometime with
         in the next 24 months."

I:      "Yeah, I've been collecting you know, I, I think I basically 
         have almost every b-side, there's some great tunes on there..."

Dave:   "A lot of people have said to me, why don't you put out a 
         b-sides album yeah know..."

I:      "There's some really great tunes on there."

Dave:   "I'm really looking forward to digging through the... and 
         sifting through the...the you know the vaults and seeing what,
         you know, things like 'Pavilion Steps' when we first started
         out..."

I:      "Oh, that's a great song"

Dave:   "You know..."

I:      "Yeah"

Dave:   "But, umm, sometime within the next 24 months, I think that's 
         what we will be doing."

I:      "That's cool, that's good to hear.  So there's no you doing the 
         solo tour, there's no break-up.  I know, between like every
         album there's like rumors..."

Dave:   "Well listen, If we had time to split up, we probably would 
         have..."

I:      (laughs)

Dave:   "...but we just haven't had the time to split up (laughs)"

I:      "Ok, can I ask you to elaborate, I've noticed in the past, on 
         almost every tour, like there has been a lot of college tours,
         you've been playing gymnasiums, and stuff, and there's usually
         around, I can count, almost 10 dates in the tri-state area,
         every tour, this tri-state area, but last tour there was just
         The Ritz and that's it?"

Dave:   "Yeah, we originally intended to come back out here and tour in 
         March, but what happened was we got, we went out to England to
         do and did a tour of England, went out to do a European tour.  
         After the European tour, we said look, we've been on the road
         for, I don't know, 10 years nearly, well since 1983, and even
         before that, I mean we started touring 1981, even before we got
         out to America.  We suddenly turned 'round and said 'Hey, we're
         burning out here', you know 'were starting to tread the
         treadmill of rock'n'roll', and ah, we stopped touring right then
         and said 'we've gotta figure out a way to break out of this.
         You know, we've become an industry standard, which is what we
         set out to avoid.  You know, the whole purpose of putting The
         Alarm together back in, ya know, when we got it together in
         1981, was to go against the grain, and we suddenly turn around
         and see ourselves going with the grain, and we said 'hold on,
         this isn't right, The Alarm is, you know, better than that'.
         So we put together an idea that would give us time for us all to
         go out and do our own things.  We've recorded all this work in
	 the studio, and , ah, I think we've successfully managed to get 
         off the rock'n'roll treadmill, which, you develop a tunnel
         vision which is very negative, ah, and ah, it's altogether too
         safe.  You know The Alarm is a band that is unsafe.

I:      "Ok, umm, any of the other guys in the group with solo projects
	 coming out?"

Dave:   "Ah, Well, Twist has had a pretty heavy duty solo project, he's
	 just become a father, umm, and he's out on the Californian side
	 of the country right now, and umm he's busy being a father, as
	 a matter of fact, he asked me to be the Godfather, and ah, I
	 wasn't too sure how to handle that, and ah, I wasn't too sure
	 how to handle that, so I spoke to his mother, and said 'So 
         what's a Godfather supposed to do?' and she said 'well hell,
         stick some bread in your cheeks, and speak like Marlon Brando"
         so I guess, you know...(laughs)"

I:      "Typical Godfather..."

Dave:   "(laughs) right, so here I am."

I:      "Yeah 'cause I'd heard about some dates, ah, I don't know if 
         they were actual dates, but, Mike Peters did a couple solo
         things over in Europe..."

Dave:   "Well he was going to do a solo thing, but we all ended up 
         getting together at a festival called Greenbelt, which is a
         religious sort of festival in the south of England..."
	 
I:      "Yeah, that's actually where I heard it..."         

Dave:   "...and ah, we played a very very stripped down set with no 
	 equipment, and we just got up on stage and busked it., and ah,
	 that went down really great and that sort of put us on the 
         track of saying 'hell, you know, we don't need the huge
         rock'n'roll production, anymore, you know, we can just strip
         it all back down to the basics, and that's exactly what we've
         down with this recording that will be coming out in the new
         year."

I:      "Oh that's, ok, that sounds really good then..."

Dave:   "The no production production (laughs)"

I:      "Yeah, I was going to ask you, lots of people, have, I won't
	 say, have started to dislike The Alarm sound, but when you 
         first started out you basically had like these acoustic
         guitars, and then I noticed, since like Strength, and on, it's
         been mostly, umm most of the songs are electric guitars..."

Dave:   "Yeah, Yeah..."

I:      "...a lot of people have sort of, like I don't want to say      
	 have disliked that sound since then, but, was there any reason
	 for losing that..."

Dave:   "Well, I think...I think that the reason for losing that was 
         simply because we've been on the road so long, and treading
         the boards for so long that we kind of lost sight a little bit
         of the original vision of the band, and that is why were taking
         this time off now, were getting back to the original spirit,
         the original feeling, the original sound of the band, and were
         going to come back in the new year with a...with a spirit that
         is going to carry through."

I:      "Ok, that's great, 'cause you guys had such...energy and 
         passion, you came out just banging on these acoustic guitars,
         and just singing your hearts out..."

Dave:   "Well I hope we do a little banging and yelling tonight up there
	 on stage."

I:      "(laughs) Yeah, well, hopes are, any of these guys going to be
	 playing with you, or is it just you?"

Dave:   "Yeah, umm, tonight I'm going to be doing like half a show 
         acoustic, and we'll be doing a few electric songs I've written..."

I:      "That's cool, can we hear anything...will we hear anything rare,
	 like maybe, Tell Me, or Black Side Of Fortune or something?"

Dave:   "Well, I don't know, just keep your ears open and see what 
         happens (laughs)"

I:      "Ok, trying to dig for secrets (laughs)...Ok, I guess that's
	 about it, I don't want to keep you too long...".

Dave:   "Thank you very much,... for having me on the station..."

I:      "Thank you".      


Transcribed by Steve Fulton <sfulton@ix.netcom.com>, April 23, 1995