I did not have to go too far back to pick my favourite photo of last year as it was taken just last month – but it was almost 40 years in the making. A close second would have been finally getting a photo of Jeremy Corbyn, on the balcony during last year’s Durham Miners Gala, but I had only waited since 2015 for that shot.
I have followed The Men They Couldn’t Hang since 1987 since I discovered the album Waiting For Bonaparte but it was not until 2003 that I first reviewed one of their gigs in Sheffield and got the chance to interview Paul Simmonds who was one of the founding members.
Over the years I saw the band on a number of occasions, and let’s just say there were a few “lost weekends” during that time, and it is good to see that since then a few of the band members are now what I would consider as friends.
The band first started gigging way back in 1984, around the same time as The Pogues, and when they announced a 40th anniversary tour to mark the anniversary thought I had to cover one of their gigs and I was pleased when I realised that they were due to play in Kendal.
And I decided I wanted to do a decent job, the band were very generous with their time ahead of the gig, and it resulted in a lengthy feature and review of the gig which featured on both the News & Star and Westmorland Gazette websites. It made for some decent photos of the soundcheck, backstage and the gig itself.
Let’s just say after the gig I ended up with some of the band in a Kendal bar after midnight, after taking a wrong turn towards my hotel, when I was introduced to the concept of Jägerbombs. But that, as they say, is another story.
Having said that it turned out I was staying at the same hotel as the band and crew and it was good to catch up as they eventually emerged for breakfast the following morning.
So here are the resulting stories from that eventful night.
Hanging out with The Men They Couldn’t Hang before Kendal gig
40 years after the band first got together, The Men They Couldn’t Hang marked the anniversary by embarking on a 40-date tour which arrived in Kendal for the penultimate gig before rounding things off in Glasgow last Saturday (December 14). Reporter IAN DUNCAN spent some time with the band as they reflected on their career so far and their hopes for the future…
IT is hard to believe but it is 40 years since The Men They Couldn’t Hang played their first gigs and who would have expected that they would still be going stronger than ever today.
Despite the unexpected death of founding member Stefan Cush in February 2021 they decided to continue in his memory and because it was what he would have wanted.
As well as releasing a compilation album – The Magnificent 40, which features 40 tracks from 40 years – the remaining members decided to embark on a 40-date tour to mark the occasion and last Friday thy arrived in Kendal.
Speaking ahead of the gig, original member Paul Simmonds says the tour had been tiring but very fulfilling. He adds: “In a way I can’t wait for it to be over, but on the other hand there have been really some really very special nights and some very special emotional situations throughout. Don’t forget we’ve been on the road since the end of April.”
He says that Kendal is “very pretty” and he praised the Brewery Arts centre as a “lovely venue”. He adds: “It’s very solid. That’s beautiful. I like it. I’ve never been to Cumbria really apart from Whitehaven. I like Whitehaven though, and we played Cockermouth as well and it was another place that we liked.
“It’s very cut off, of course, but what we found was there was a little enclave of The Men They Couldn’t Hang fans over in Whitehaven and Cockermouth and it was good to go and play for them. We went there a lot in the 2010s.”
When asked whether he felt the tour was a tribute to Cush he said it was a tribute to the band andadded: “When he died, we did a small tour and that was a tribute to Cush.
“Once that was done, we decided we had to carry on as ourselves, for ourselves, in our own way. So now we’ve had to forge a new identity of our own.”
Having said that he says it was a hard decision for the band to continue and added: “Everyone was always saying something big is missing. So, I had to get to that point where we’ve subtly changed the band, what we wanted to encompass, our abilities and the skillsets that we’ve all got and I feel that we’re a slightly different band. But we’re as good and that is what I wanted.”
Simmonds says the band dynamic is good and adds: “In some ways we are more unified because Cush was a larger-than-life character. So, to a lot of people, he defined what they thought about The Men They Couldn’t Hang and they would have a picture of him in their mind.”
He says that choosing the setlist was tough. “Some of them [the songs] picked themselves because they’re certainly the sort of The Men They Couldn’t Hang staples that people would insist that we did and we’re happy to do them.
“As for picking the other songs it really depended initially navigating our way around to trying not to choose the songs that Cush had made uniquely his own style, even if he hadn’t written them. So, choosing the songs was just a practical challenge rather than anything else.”
As to the future plans for the band he says: “There’ll always be an album on the horizon, but when it comes out, I don’t know. It’s a very tortuous procedure.”
Fellow original member Phil “Swill” Odgers agrees that the tour is going well but adds: “I am at my tiredest but we did push the boat out last night.
“But we started the tour in April and, you know, we have got the last date tomorrow in Glasgow and we’ve covered a lot of mileage and been to quite a few places we haven’t been to for some time.”
He says that the 40-gig tour tied in with the anniversary and the response from the audiences had been “amazing”. He adds “We seem to have picked up new people along the way, or maybe not along the physical way, but over the years sort of thing and also, surprisingly, younger people and it’s noticeable in the audience.
“There’s lots of people coming there that have got their grown up kids but I’m meeting a lot of young people who have grown up with The Men They Couldn’t Hang, so they were born into it and their parents were listening to it and they’ve grown to like it too.
“So, it’s good to see that we say we’ve got them about three generations in all together kind of listening to us now.”
He says April was the start of the tour and finishing in December was “significant” and he adds: “It just seems like the end of the year is a good time to tie it up.”
Odgers says that it was an “incredibly difficult” decision to continue and adds: “Cush died during COVID and what happened to every band during that COVID period was that all tours were cancelled and then all those gigs were rescheduled.”
He says it was a chance for the band to grieve together, and for the audience to grieve together, and, at a London gig, Cush’s sons came along and they had a long chat because “it keeps his name alive”.
He says that they would keep his memory alive but “not that it would diminish”. He adds: “I think we’ve come to a stage in our lives and, as a band, we’re not exactly a legacy band, but you know, it sounds like a cliché. But we’re like the fans, we’re like a big family, and the family is the band and it’s also the people who come to see us. I feel like they’re part of a family too, you know, and we’re all comfortable with each other.”
When asked what advice he would give his younger self he said “Don’t do it” but then admits: “My younger self wouldn’t have listened to me”.
Bassist Ricky McGuire, whose musical CV includes a stint with UK Subs and has been with the band for the past 37 years, says it was important to mark the anniversary and adds: “You know Cush passed away and we didn’t know if we wanted to even continue at that particular time.
“But, you know, the gigs just got better and better and I just think that it was the perfect way and we just did it to push the bond and for the 40th year, you know.”
Drummer Billy Abbott, who has been with the band for around 20 years, says they have a massive following. He adds: “I think it’s been a fantastic year. I mean it’s been worth every minute of this tour it has been worth it.
“It’s been amazing. It’s been a huge success. So, yeah, it is absolutely definitely very worth doing.”
He says that he wanted the band to continue what they were doing and adds: “I want to keep going. It’s a nice way to end the year. A nice big gig in Glasgow. I’ve got all the family coming up.”
Tom Spencer, who describes himself as the new boy being in the band for the past 27 years, says the band was nervous about starting again after losing Cush and adds: “When the dates were coming up after lockdown, everyone was nervous.
“I was nervous because I was still on my bit of the stage. The band were nervous because he’s their brother. But he’s my brother too, you know what I mean?
“They go back a long way. and then it was just the crowd reaction that made it feel like the right thing to do and then it’s grown into a kind of new thing, and it’s been great. It’s been really nice.”
He says that losing Cush during lockdown gave the band time to decide whether or not to continue and adds: “The hardest thing was trying to bury him and not having a funeral but, by the time the gigs were allowed to happen, there’d been enough time to digest it and consider it.
“The gigs were booked before he passed away, so they were just postponed. So, I think the first reason, I think it was about six gigs that the band decided to do to test the water. And then we did those six, and then on the back of them started rebooking.”
He says the band bonded, including a group hug on stage, and adds: “It made us feel more part of it, we become more essential perhaps. You know, I had just stepped forward and sing some of the songs, not too many, because it would be disrespectful.
“It just felt like a natural progression. I think if they’d got someone else in it would have been a question mark, wouldn’t it? It would be no replacement. Because I was there and I was tight with Cush it felt a little bit natural. It did feel weird, standing on his bit of the stage because I used to be the other side.
“But then it was silly things like having his guitar on stage helped, you know, just the thing and for the first tour we name checked him all the time.”
And he says that Cush was still with them in spirit. “I think it was the second or third gig we played Brighton Concord. Again, it was packed out and we were doing a soundcheck and then, it’s one of those moments, where Swill felt someone press his shoulder.
“So, I don’t believe it was his spiritual ghost or whatever, but his presence was just there, without a doubt because he always used to come late to sound checks and gigs.
“So even those gigs, you kept expecting the dressing room door to burst open and him to turn up and it’s only after x amount of gigs you realize he’s just not.”
Spencer says that the band even has the approval of Cush’s family and adds: “Getting their approval was major, and they were down the front in tears and everything.
“And so, once we realized that the closest people ever to Cush approved, let alone that the extended Men They Couldn’t Hang family was very nice. It gave us his blessing, you know?”
As to the future for the band future he says that it was up to the rest of the band and adds: “It’s up to the boys, so the hierarchy are very much Ricky, Paul and Swill, right? That is their band and their business.”
Bobby Valentino has provided the band’s distinctive fiddle sound for almost 40 years and he has great tales to tell, having recorded with the likes of Tom Petty and Kirsty McColl. He said it was important to be involved with the anniversary tour.
He says: “I’ve been with them for about 37 years. There are not many bands that make 40 years, are there? I thought ‘I’ve got to do that, haven’t I?’”
Valentino says there had been some “hard drives” in the early hours during the tour to get to the various gigs but it was a short trip to Kendal from Stockton-on-Tees and adds: “You know, it’s been two hour drives every day I love that.”
He says that losing Cush affected the band and adds: “I kind of dipped in and out with the band, because often I’d be working somewhere, so I couldn’t do some of the long-distance tours and some of the foreign tours.
“So, all the stories I hear of Cush in Egypt and Australia, and some of the crazy things he did, which I never experienced. But the stories, I think, they get a bit larger in the telling.”
And he says he felt that it was the right decision that the band should continue after Cush’s death and adds: “I’ve no doubt about that because we do some of his songs, you know, so his songs keep living.
“I think that’s one of the things you like as a songwriter to know that your songs are still gonna get played when you’re gone.
“In fact, he his earning royalties on them for the next 70 years. It’s just he won’t get them.”
FEATURE: As it appeared on the News & Star website
REVIEW: The Men They Couldn’t Hang at Brewery Arts, Kendal
IT is a scary thought when you realise this year marks the 40th anniversary of The Men They Couldn’t Hang (TMTCH) playing their first gigs together back in 1984.
They emerged with their own distinctive blend of folk/punk around the same time as The Pogues, and band’s name was originally coined by none other than Shane MacGowan as a potential moniker for his own band.
He got the inspiration from the book The Man They Could Not Hang which chronicled the life of John Henry George “Babbacombe” Lee who was famous for surviving three attempts to hang him for murder.
Original band member Stefan Cush was a roadie for The Pogues at the time and, when the name was not used, he decided to keep it for himself and the rest is history.
Having said that I was relatively late to the party as I only really discovered the band with the release of 1987’s Waiting For Bonaparte breakthrough album but I quickly caught up by buying the two albums that preceded it.
As you might expect the band has faced adversity over the years – including a break up and the subsequent reunion – but nothing could have prepared them for the unexpected death of co-lead singer Cush in February 2021 after suffering a heart attack.
That could have been the end of the road for them but the remaining band members decided to keep on going with Tom Spencer (guitar/banjo) stepping forward to take more of a leading role than he had previously enjoyed.
To mark the band’s milestone anniversary they released a compilation album – The Magnificent 40 – which featured 40 tracks culled from across their career with a cover depicting them as Wild West heroes (or villains) and it was a nice touch that a ghostly figure of Cush was also depicted because it goes without saying that he is still with them in spirit.
They also embarked on a 40-date tour earlier this year and by the time you read this they will have wrapped things up with a triumphant final date in Glasgow last Saturday (December 14).
Putting aside the associations of the date of Friday 13’s gig – the bad luck and slasher horror movies – it was something I was looking forward to.
Support on the night was provided by duo Briar & Bramble, featuring Mike Turnbull and Kate Hewson, with their own take on contemporary folk with a dark Cumbrian twist. One of the songs told of summoning a demon from a dead animal’s corpse. They were well received by the appreciative crowd.
It seemed appropriate that TMTCH took the stage to the theme tune from the film The Magnificent Seven, given the title of the compilation album, and they kicked off proceedings with a rousing version of the track Raising Hell.
Given that they had material from a 40-year career to choose from it was no surprise that fans would be disappointed that their favourite tracks would not be included and my mate Garth was sorry that they did not play Scarlet Ribbons from the first album.
I mean when I first got a look at Friday’s setlist I was also disappointed to learn that, despite Rosettes being included, they would not be playing it.
Having said that it was packed with crowd pleasers including a few personal favourites such as: Shirt Of Blue, Going Back To Coventry; The Ghosts Of Cable Street; The Lion And The Unicorn; Smugglers; The Colours; The Crest; The Green Fields of France (No Man’s Land) and Ironmasters to name but a few and it was also nice to hear new material such as Red Kite Rising which is basically the band’s tribute to Cush.
One highlight of the night for me was to witness the connection between the band and one particular fan, Lewis Rose from Whitehaven, because you clearly see he was really enjoying the show. And he was not alone there as the crowd really gave the band a warm Cumbrian welcome.
Having seen the band on a few occasions over the years it was the first time I had seen them joined by fiddle player Bobby Valentino who has contributed to their recordings and live performances for almost 40 years.
They finished with tracks including Walkin’ Talkin’ and A Night To Remember which is basically a headline writer’s dream, as that is exactly what it was.
Ian Duncan Media 