'...and then, he grabbed me by the throat and dragged me off stage,' said Phil. I was appalled. There is no need for that sort of thing, but wait... I'm getting ahead of myself here. You don't even know where here is. Here I am telling you about the throat of Phil, and you're none the wiser as to who what where when and why. Who is Phil? Phil is the musical siamese twin of Leigh, and they are the frontmen of Harem Pilots. What is going on in this little article? I'm interviewing them. Where? In a dark, warm but cramped corner of the Thirsty Scholar. When? Now, you loon; but why? Why? Why am I interviewing them? Because I saw them playing live and they were incredible. It would be rather gauche of me to quote my own review of the night, so I won't. Instead, I'll quote someone else.

'This was THE most well-received set of a night packed with the cream of Manchester's emerging musical talent ... a confidence and panache that separates them from the rest of the Manchester scene ... shows promise that could catapult them into the big league' - glasswerk.co.uk

The above quote comes from an 'Unsigned Bands Night in Academy One' Nobody grabbed Phil by the throat on that night. No, that sort of thing only happen when. But here I am, jumping ahead of myself again. Lets find out a little about the band before we descend down the slick blade of graphic violence.

The Thirsty Scholar is a drinking establishment, by the way. I thought it best to clarify that. To say I'm in the Thirsty Scholar sounds like a rbookworm and Oliver Reed, while the latter is reading a text book. To a peasant like myself, this pub has a certain touch of the intelligentsia about it, a touch of the gleaming spires of Cambridge; the panache of the Left Bank and the coolness of a café bar on a rain slick cobbled street.

It's also on the route of the number 84 bus, which is how Phil and Leigh from Harem Pilots got here. They are sitting in the corner of an alcove, both nursing a pint. Leigh, the big guy is unshaven. A five-day growth contours his neck and chin. His black curly hair, hangs over his forehead. It marionettes whenever he moves his head vigorously, a little puppet show of follicles. The hair is a curly shock of live DNA, unearthed and crackling through his genetic make up.

Phil, on the other hand, is almost elfin in comparison. His hair hasn't yet gotten out of bed. The follicle alarm went off but he smothered it with a warm pillow. Hair is nature's way of keeping his ears warm. If for whatever reason, he were to meet a band of Cheyenne, intent on taking scalps, they would be more likely to give him a shampoo and blow-dry than disturb such a relaxed thatch. Leigh would also be safe, unless he was unfortunate enough to come across an Apache with a set of power tools.

I start my questions with the obvious.

Where does the name Harem Pilots come from?

Leigh explains, 'it comes from a time when Phil had a revolving door policy with women. That was where the Harem bit came from.' The image of Phil getting his luggage stuck between two women as they circle him is probably not what he meant.

Phil: 'The Pilot bit of the name comes from a song I wrote ages ago. It was the first really cool riff I had. At least I thought so at the time. And I liked the word Pilot because it has such a multitude of associations with it.'

Why Harem Pilots, in that order? Why not Pilots Harem?'

Leigh: ' Because it sounds to much like Procul Harum.' And he was right. It does. He added, 'it also conjures up sexual control.'

Phil snickers into his pint. I laugh at all of the possible meanings of such a statement. Has Leigh got an answering machine which says, 'can't get to the phone at the moment. I'm a bit tied up. Please leave a massage.' I look at him, eyebrows raised and more than a little amused. 'How do you mean? Sexual control? As in more than three minutes?' (Does that include getting your socks off?) Leigh laughs. It was the kind of laugh a cartoon buffalo would make. 'No,' he says, 'I mean it in the sense of being sexually powerful within yourself as a man. A confidence in your own potency.'

Oh, I get it. This interview has it all; sex, politics, religion and violence.

How long have Harem Pilots been together?

This is one of those odd band questions that are hard to answer. Bands go through so many different people, how do you pinpoint the place where the band actually is a conscious group entity. Leigh and Phil actually formed the band. Dave, the bass player, and Rhodri on drums are fairly recent additions to the band. The previous bass player left to play in a folk band which is a bit of an odd transition; from rock to folk; like discovering your girlfriend is a lesbian; or celibate; or catholic; but only since she met you; you wanker.

And to answer my own question in a suitably vague manner, Harem Pilots have been together for a few years, but it's only this year, after Dave and Rhodri replaced the original bass player and drummer, that the band began to establish its musical identity.

What happened to the original drummer?

Leigh: 'He left to join a covers band. It was a bit sad actually. We knew he was leaving, and we had a replacement lined up, which was Rhodri. On the last day, we had a rehearsal with the old drummer but he rang to say he'd be an hour late. So, seeing as Rhodri was already there we started to play and it was great. When the guy turned up, it was like turning up at your ex-girlfriends house and she's having sex. His face fell, but what can you do? He did decide to leave after all.'

Oddly enough, or perhaps not, Rhodri is studying genetics. If he ever says he'd like to get into your jeans, just spit into a petri dish and give it to him.

What happened to the original bass player?

Leigh says: 'We're still in contact with him. He was a mate of ours; a lovely bloke; a real virtuoso. He played accordion for Jarvis Cocker.'

I guess that's better than playing cock for Jarvis Accordianer, the minister of culture in France.

Leigh: 'It felt like a complete disaster when he left, but it worked out better in the end. Dave (his replacement) is an integral part of the band now. In fact, I've still got the text I sent him. It said 'I would like to offer you the roll of bass player in Harem Pilots.'

The text Dave sent as a reply read, 'I cordially accept.'

(DAVE PICTURED BELOW)

Where do the songs come from?

Leigh: 'Well, with Cunt for example, I had wanted to say something about gun culture, but it only really came into focus after I'd watched Newsround of all things. I saw a report on So Solid Crew.'

Cunt is a good example of the direct approach to lyrics favoured by Leigh. You can't get any more direct than having a line which says 'only cunts use guns.' Though saying that, even though the message of the song is very direct, there is still a twist as you can see by the flow of the lyrics..

there is no joy in her eyes
there's no truth in her lies
though you can not disguise
she's inventive with her alibis

only cunts hit wives

the funny thing is you're offended by dirty words

Phil: 'I like to work around a phrase, or an idea. Just sort of let it flow, adding to it and then afterwards say to myself, what does it mean? Like, where's it coming from? The song 'Observations from Behind The Bar' was literally that. The phrase came first, from the punters side of the bar, then sometime later I ended up working behind the bar itself.


The word observation is interesting in relation to Phil. He likes to make the observation and write about it, but leave the lyric as something open to interpretation. The listener brings their own meaning to it. This adds an extra dimension to the song, for him. Take the song Charlie, for example. It can be taken as a rage against a person; but Charlie is also cocaine, which was flying around like Beelzebub's dandruff at the 'In The City' event, held each year in Manchester. Charlie is also part of the chord sequence, E and C, Echo and Charlie. In particular, though, this song was inspired by their experience with the whole bullshit side of the music industry at 'In The City'.

Which brings me back to the story about Phil being grabbed by the throat. Don't worry. I've not forgotten, but it's so rock and roll, I'm saving it for later.

Leigh says, 'we had some guy at the end of it come up to us and say we need just one frontman.'

Pilots have two and I'm talking with them both.

Leigh: 'He also said I need to lose weight.'

They collectively told him to fuck off because he just didn't get it. Pilots are what they are and they don't compromise to suit a suit, so to speak. When they sing 'I won't change, take me as you find me, try not to remind me who you really are...' they mean it. Like many bands there is the dichotomy of needing the business to succeed, but loathing the bullshit of it.

'...my big regret is needing you, i just don't get the greed in you'.

The song Charlie could be the anthem for many a young idealistic band in it's raw state, before the loss of innocence, a rage against the hand that would feed it.

The ambiguity of the title, is a good example of the different approaches the two Harem Pilot frontmen take. Leigh likes to be direct and spell things out, likes to be specific. Phil prefers the ambiguity; letting people take their own meaning from the songs, letting them bring themselves to the lyric.

You would think, with the two approaches to song writing there would be a conflict. Phil and his preference for ambiguity, and Leigh with his technique of calling a spade a spade, or calling a spade a cunt, for that matter. Personally, I like to be a little bit more diplomatic, a tad more circumspect, so I asked the twat how he gets away with it.

Actually, no I didn't.

I stuck to the question of songwriting and if there is any conflict. There isn't. They just work on it until all the boxes are ticked. If a song doesn't work for everybody concerned, then it doesn't go in the set.  Egos are left at the door.

What were the first songs you recorded together?

Leigh: 'Two of mine and two of Phils. It was before we actually got the band together. On an old four track Phil had. Stuff that we had lying about when we met, really. They were Observations From Behind The Bar, The Futures Not Bleak , My Street and I Will Control You.'

We all laughed at the last one, considering the remark Leigh had made about the name Harem Pilots and sexual control.

'Yeah,' he said, pointing at himself, 'guess who wrote that one?'

I'm only an amateur hack, myself, so my guess counts for nothing, I guess; but Leigh does actually seem to have a thing about control; or perhaps a better way to put it would be, to organise. Though, in terms of expressing this through songwriting, 'I Will Control You,' sounds much better as a title than, 'I Will Come Around And Tidy Up The Flat.'

A large part of the drive of the band, in terms of getting gigs and getting from A to B comes from Leigh. He is the guy who makes the phone calls and organises things like coaches to get the fans to a suitable place to be blown away by their live set. Phil himself says 'Without Leigh, we'd probably get to the rehearsal room and just jam.' As an afterthought he adds that they would probably still come up with something great, but the point is well made.

'Yeah,' Leigh agrees, doing a 'puppety' sort of thing with his hands by way of illustration,' I get all puppet-mastery for rehearsals, but we can only afford it once a week and there's a shitload of things to be done. I go into it with what we need to do, very much in mind. I'm probably the worst musician in the band but I do make the phone calls and organise things. Phil is more into doing the artwork and things like that so it works out pretty well. Dave and Rhodri are pretty switched on as well so it usually goes pretty smoothly.'

'Just out of interest,' he says, 'who do you think wrote what out of the rest?'

I thought 'The Futures Not Bleak,' was one of Phils. Don't know why, because in retrospect Phil has a certain melancholy about him. In fact, that song was one that Leigh wrote. Lyrically, it reminds me of the statements about control:

I suppose there's rebellious streaks in everyone
Mine will never let me go
My depth of passion's like a loaded gun
I'm waiting to explode

If Phil has a melancholic streak, then Leigh has something pent up inside and my guess is that this is what fuels him, creatively. Exactly what's there I don't know, for one, and for another it's none of my business, and this is just a guess after all; but, I find it interesting that he's a drama teacher. Surely drama is the controlled release of emotion? They both agreed, at different points during the course of the conversation, that songwriting is therapeutic. Who knows? Perhaps without the music, the ebullient Leigh would explode, and the reticent, quietly spoken Phil would slowly implode? They certainly are an interesting combination in any case, even without the amateur psychology.

How does playing live compare with studio work?

Phil: 'I like the studio thing because even if you're just sitting around, you still know you're doing something good, something somebody can take away and play. I think it's different than playing live, because with that, it's a half hour explosion. You get more of a release from it, but with recording it's more of a slow burn. But I like then both. Ideally I'd like to spend five months on the road, five moths recording and then two on a beach drinking Tequila.'

Leigh 'It's nice to be able to listen to yourself. You don't really get that at a show.''  I thought 'show' was an interesting word to use. I was bringing out the drama teacher in Leigh.

Phil agreed: 'Yeah that's something you miss out on when you're playing. I think recording can spoil you though. You see how it's all put together and it takes away some of the magic.'

Had Leigh and Phil had much studio experience before Harem Pilots?

Phil: 'Yeah I did some with an earlier band.'

Leigh: 'Yeah. Both times were disastrous. The first one, there were no clips on the high-hat, so I had to hold it for the recording and my hands got cut. Bled all over the place and the cymbals and the high-hat sounded like dustbin lids. Shit. And in the second studio experience, the guy went and recorded all over the demo!  I'd already told him he should label it but he didn't.'

Geetan: ' Fucking hell!  What did you say?'

Leigh: 'Wanker!'

For those of you have seen them, you 'll know that Harem Pilots are a great live band. The review I wrote can be read here. The gig I missed, beforehand was in the Academy. That was one that would have been worth seeing. Leigh ended up surfing the crowd. Well, actually, he didn't so much surf as land on it.

Leigh: 'That was wild.'

Phil: 'I was the one who was going to do it. I was talking about it before the gig but when it came to it, I had a better idea. We were about halfway through the set. I was moving across the stage, and Leigh was there with a foot up on the monitor, and when I got behind him, I just thought... 'it would be so easy to push Leigh off', and guess what? It was. I gave him a push and launched him.'

Leigh: 'The crowd caught me alright. It was great. And I never dropped a note though oddly enough, after the gig, one of the girls who caught me said, 'I licked you twice.'

That's saying something, because Harem Pilots are a hard band to lick...

Well, maybe if you ask them nicely.

How come you were dragged off stage by the throat?

Phil is rolling up, manipulating the wafer thin paper, scattering the tobacco. He's got quite delicate fingers; nature designed the opposable thumbs so we could manipulate our environment more readily; then it put a little more work into Phil's fingers so he could roll a neat cigarette.

Phil: 'It was at In The City, and we were playing support for this other band in Rock World, but we got fucked over the time. I'd been out partying all weekend and was suffering from my alcohol and drug intake, but well up for it. The headline band fucked up to start with because they hadn't brought a bass amp. So, we sat around for hours waiting for them to sort themselves out. We drank Red Bull, gallons of the stuff, just waiting. Eventually one turned up, and we got our chance to set up and play our set. We were supposed to have half an hour but they said, no, fifteen minutes.'

Leigh: 'We were well pissed off. And we found out afterwards that loads of the people who had come to see us were overcharged. If you had a flyer, you got discount, but on the door, they just asked for six quid and didn't mention the flyer, so most people just paid. We were mad on their behalf.'

Phil: ' it was a shambles. And then, after the second song the guy comes up and says we've got ten minutes left.'

Now, I can tell you, Leigh and Phil are nice guys, genuine, straight up nice guys. But, I've seen Harem Pilots play live, rocking away with Dave and Rhodri and it's a musical whirling dervish. I wouldn't want to tell them to turn down, never mind cut the set in half. On stage, these guys are Clarke Kent having kicked his way out of the phone box.

'And then,' Phil says, and I notice his fist is clenched, all knuckle and slick gristle grinding with the memory of it, 'we did the third song, and they unplugged my mike.'

Leigh: 'Wankers. There were fifty people there to see us, overcharged and shortchanged on the set.'

Phil: 'Yeah. So I grabbed the mike off the stand in front of Leigh, and said, 'right! Who wants us to play another song?'

Leigh: 'The crowd went wild. They were loving it.'

Phil: ''Next thing we knew, we were surrounded by bouncers.'

I was aghast. 'Then what happened?'

Leigh: ' We started thrashing the stage and that's when the bouncers kicked off. Fucking madness that was. One went right for Phil.'

Phil clutched his throat and said, 'That's when he grabbed me by the throat and dragged me off stage.'

Leigh: 'I'm too big to get pulled anywhere, so they used a little reverse psychology and pushed me off. The bouncers threw us out and we got banned. Can you believe it?. Banned from Jillys Rock World for being too rock and roll. They should change the name of it to Bland World.' He took a deep beer swallow, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and said, 'Fuckers. But at least it got sorted in the end. The promoter rang and made it right with us, which was pretty decent. It wasn't his fault anyway. He was horrified when he heard. Bless him.'

Bless him?


Are Phil And Leigh Religious?

Leigh, shaking his head, fringe doing an impromptu dance: 'No. That guy with the white beard sitting on a cloud and all that. Can't say I do, but I do believe in some kind of spirit. I have a theological theory that we have a personal heaven and hell. No one knows for sure but I think life goes on and the soul exists through other people who knew you. So, being remembered in a positive way is like that person's heaven, and in a negative way, well, that's hell. The soul lives on by... eh... everywhere you go, you leave your soul behind.'

Phil: ' Yeah. Everywhere you go you leave a memory. '

Leigh: 'That's it. I guess Einstein's Theory actually means something in the general scheme of things.'

(At this point, the music that had been played in the background became just that bit louder so I moved over to sit beside Phil. I put out my stuff on the bench, and had a flashback of the seats in an old church. With my head bowed to listen to Phil's quiet voice, I felt like I was in a confessional. I may just tell them both to say three Bloody Marys and not to do it again.)

Phil: 'I've got a similar take on it to Leigh. I don't believe in the guy with the beard and the cape or whatever (surely that was Barry White, the Walrus of Love, and not God, but I got the idea). 'People do live through you. Spirit is evidently alive because you can see it and feel it. People who I knew who have died, live through me.'

( I had a sudden flash of a Jesus like figure, no doubt brought on by the whole church bench thing and Phil's long hair. Mind you, Phil only got grabbed by the throat and not hammered to a cross. Though, now I come to think of it, he did say he got hammered on the night before the 'In The City' gig. Wonder if the gig was organised by a guy called Pontious Pilate... hang on... the Harems got into a punch up on stage... fuck me... Pontious Pilate - Pilot Punchup ... it's uncanny. I'd better stop thinking along those lines before I lose it altogether.)

There was more.

Much more.

But, I'm already on page nine of this epic glimpse, if you can have such a thing, (the editor tells me no you can't, so ignore that bit) and I feel the need to close; because really, the best thing you can do, the very, very best thing, is to go and listen to HAREM PILOTS, see them live, be invigorated, blast the plaque off your musical teeth and come out smiling, sure that you've seen one of the best bands in Manchester, knowing that you're in on the secret

You may be the one Leigh lands on next time Phil surreptitiously pushes him off the stage...

But I wouldn't hold your breath

Well, not unless one of the bouncers has you by the throat.