Interview: Guy Griffin

Guy Griffin. Photo: Paul Clayton
Guy Griffin. Photo: Paul Clayton

Guy Griffin: “I never have anything finished until it has to be finished.” Photo: Paul Clayton

Leaving The Quireboys behind: the singer, guitarist, and songwriter reflects on the rise of his new band Black Eyed Sons

In the wake of their dramatic split from The Quireboys, guitarist-turned-frontman Guy Griffin and his longtime bandmates have reemerged as Black Eyed Sons. Known for their bluesy, swaggering rock sound, The Quireboys rose to fame with their 1990 debut album A Bit of What You Fancy, establishing them as one of Britain’s most beloved rock acts over the next decade. Now, Griffin, Keith Weir, Paul Guerin, Pip Mailing, and Nick Mailing are launching a new chapter with their debut Black Eyed Sons album, Cowboys In Pinstriped Suits (out this month).

Blending original compositions like the title track and So Glorious with dynamic covers like Mink DeVille’s Savoir Faire, the album boasts contributions from rock royalty, including Joe Elliott and Charlie Starr. With plenty of classic rock to keep fans happy, elements of punk, indie, and soul broaden out the sound and create the sense of musicians and songwriters revitalised.

In our chat, Griffin opens up about the band’s evolution, the album’s creation, and their forward-focused vision.

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Do you tend to do your writing at home in the studio?

“Yeah. I’ve actually got a proper vocal booth in here. My partner does presenting and voiceovers, luckily, just before lockdown, we had this office-type thing/studio built in the garden. I used to work on the buildings and stuff years ago so I’ve got a lot of friends I knew… It’s soundproof and we’ve had this about seven years now, and I’ve made a couple of records in here – not in their entirety, but the bulk of them and then send it off, get someone to make it sound nice.

“I guess, back in the day, people said that they’d have a notebook, but obviously now you have your notes on your phone, or your voice recorder on the phone. If it’s a lyric idea, like one line, or somebody says something, or you see a headline in a newspaper or something like that, you just write it down. I tend to write more on the acoustic guitar. I’ve got electric guitars knocking around here for recording purposes, but I never, really, ever pick up an electric unless I’m recording or playing gigs.”

Will a lyric come to you first, and that informs the melody, and then you’ll find a chord pattern to fit?

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“Usually, if it’s purely in my head, it’d be a melody that’s come to me and then I’ll pick up the acoustic, match it to the melody, and build on it from there. It’s never a full song. The first thing I come up with, it could be the verse, or it could be the chorus, you sort of decide, ‘Actually, this could be a chorus, I’ll try and do a verse for it now.’ It’s pretty much a solitary process with me. Even though I do co-write with people, it’s usually after the nucleus of it is there, and then it needs someone else to put their input in, change it, or add some inspiration to it.”

On the new album, there are solo writes, co-writes, and covers. With the solo writes, how far along do you get the song before you then take it to the band?

“The last few years, especially going back with The Quireboys, it was quite a solitary process. A lot of it coincided with me discovering GarageBand and stuff like that because I was so non-technical. I could never make home recordings that I would want to even play to anybody. I’ve moved up, I usually like Logic now, which is sort of like grown-up GarageBand. I’m still probably better off doing basic ideas on GarageBand and you can make a record on GarageBand as well.

“I found it quite liberating because I was able to present them without having to explain myself. You could give them something that was a rough version of what you’re thinking, without sort of hokey drums on it – you can get a really good drum track. The last couple of albums we did, the drums went on last. I had the groove that I wanted which is quite handy, because sometimes, if you leave the groove up to the drummer, it might be a lot different than you’re thinking. And actually, a couple of drummers that we had on those albums, they enjoyed doing that.”

So they’d match the beat that you’d written on GarageBand?

“We went into the studio and used my arrangements on GarageBand as the actual template, and then just replaced everything. Everybody came and did what they would do and it actually works really well, because I never tell anybody what to play. You can make subtle hints sometimes, but the reason you’ve got these guys in the band with you is because of what they add with their playing and their style. So, I’m not too precious about that. Sometimes somebody will play something and it takes the song in a different direction. It makes you rethink it, and then you go back again.”

Even though you’ve worked with those guys for a long time, they can still surprise you?

“Definitely. It was a nice process to do it like that, because the actual logistics of making an album nowadays… A lot of bands will say, ‘Yeah, man, we went in the studio, had the candles, and it was all live first take,’ and you listen to it and go, ‘No, it wasn’t!’ Everyone makes a record the same way nowadays – however you can get it over that finish line.

“I mean, the last time I did a thing with the whole band, everybody there in the studio, was in 2019 at Rockfield Studios. That was great. It was great to say we were there, with all the history, it’s cool that you’re all hanging out; you have dinner in the evening. It’s a good bonding experience, if you like that sort of thing.

“But the reality is, most people are making their records at home; either having someone come over and play on it, or sending it to someone and they’re sending it back. It’s not ideal, but on some songs we’ve done, I’ve had very seasoned musicians that I respect go, ‘That sounds live.’ I didn’t say anything but, you know, it wasn’t really done live. With rock and roll songs, sometimes they can benefit from the whole band being in there, bashing it out, warts and all. But then, you’re in a studio, you bash it out, and then someone says, ‘Oh, I don’t like what I played there. Can I replace it?’ So it’s very rare that it’s a one-take thing.”


Guy Griffin. Photo: Michelle Livings

Guy Griffin: “We’re all in agreement that there are certain styles and feels of songs that sometimes weren’t as easy to be able to do as The Quireboys.” Photo: Michelle Livings

Was there one song that started the whole process for this album or are you someone who’s always writing songs and accumulating things until you have enough for an album?

“Pretty much what you just said. I’m always knocking ideas around. Some of them make it from the phone to the computer. That doesn’t sound very organic, I mean, some of them make it to actually being put down on tape. But I never have anything finished until it has to be finished.

“One way I found that’s working, which I’ve just started doing, is, I’m recording some stuff that I might put out at some point. What I’ve done is, I’ll have the verse, chorus, and sometimes the middle eight, I’ll have the rough drum track and I’ll send it over to our producer, Nick Mailing, who also plays in the Black Eyed Sons – not all the time, depending on what he’s doing.

“I send it to him, and he’ll add a couple of bits and pieces to it, maybe switch a few bits and pieces around, edit it and make it into a song structure, and send it back to me. Most of the time, the songs, where everything’s being put… he’s got a good ear for that. And then I’ve got a template to actually finish the whole song. My mind’s always wandering, so to finish anything… every record I’ve done, it always gets finished when the record company or management kick me up the arse. Not, that it’s not sort of done, but it’s just all the procrastination.”

Why do you think that is?

“I don’t know. It could be a subconscious thing. It could be a thing of being afraid to put it out to the world as well, that insecurity, especially with this record, because we’ve had a lot of stuff going on in the last three years. This is almost like a relaunch, or hopefully a rebirth, of something new. It’s really refreshing to be able to do that and not actually worry about what people are gonna think of this. It doesn’t matter, because it’s a different thing now.”

Did you have any discussions beforehand about what a Black Eyed Son song should sound like?

“It wasn’t like we were gonna go on some completely different tangent. It’s just, because of the band being who’s in it now, we’re all in agreement that there are certain styles and feels of songs that sometimes weren’t as easy to be able to do as The Quireboys, and now we can. Just going outside of that rock ‘n’ roll, Stones, Faces, sort of thing, which I absolutely love, but there’s more stuff out there.

“There’s so many influences we can bring in. Three of us have come from a similar music background. Then we’ve got a rhythm section, the Mailing brothers, who are a little bit younger than us, and come from an indie background, so it brings in different influences. You want to stay relevant but without chasing any sort of trends. I’m too old to be worrying about that sort of stuff. I think you’ve just got to do what you do as well as you can.”

With regards to the process of bringing in the guests who appear on the album, were you writing with them in mind, or you had the songs and then thought about who might work for them?

“The first song that I collaborated on was actually the song with Dan Reed from the Dan Reed Network, who I’ve known for years. The Dan Reed Network supported the Rolling Stones when we supported the Rolling Stones back in 1990. The same year, we both did a show with David Bowie. 1990 was a good year for us. His band were very original within the rock thing, they were bringing in a lot of funk, sort of like Prince, into it. He’s a very creative guy – he paints, he does indie movies and things.

“I had this song, I wrote it about four years ago. It’s called So Glorious, and I didn’t have any lyrics. That’s the other thing. I usually have two or three lines and if I collaborate with someone else, I just hand it over and let them see what they come up with. I had the chorus, and I had the melody, but it certainly didn’t sound like a Quireboys song. In fact, on this album, it sounds more like a Quireboys song than it did.”

You didn’t want to use that version?

“I was all up for putting how we originally had it on the record. It’s a great song but it’s so different from the rest of the album. We put a couple more guitars and things on it, gave it more of a vibe of what we would do, but it’s still quite different from the rest of the album.

“That was the first song I wrote, and I thought, ‘God, it’d be great if Dan Reed could sing this.’ We’ve done tours with him, and I’ve visited him before, he lives in Prague now. I just sent him it, and he sent it back. He put a couple of little sound effects and things on it, and I was like, ‘This is great,’ and I thought, ‘This could be something.’”

How about the other songs?

Cowboys In Pinstriped Suits. To me, if it was going to be anyone else on it, it was screaming out for Joe Elliot. Myself, Paul, and Keith from Black Eyed Sons have a band with Joe called The Down And Outs. We’ve done three studio albums with that and it was almost in a similar vein to some of the stuff we would have done with The Down and Outs. It references when you’re a teenager and music is everything. You’ve got your records, your posters on the wall, magazines… It namechecks a few things from that era: the 60s, 70s, 80s.

“I thought it’d be great to get Joe on it. His voice and my voice seem to work quite well together. We’ve done it before on The Down And Outs, we did almost a duet song on one of the albums. It was basically just chasing him down. He was definitely wanting to do it, but it was a crazy time with Def Leppard.”


Guy Griffin. Photo: Michelle Livings

Guy Griffin: “It’s all very well coming out with a song that’s different, but it can be a bit jarring to people who’ve followed you for years.” Photo: Michelle Livings

On a song where someone else is writing the lyrics with you, and you’ll write a part and then hand it over, will you give any explanation of what it’s about?

“Not really, no. So Glorious didn’t really have any sort of theme to it. Sometimes, when a chorus comes into your head, that’s it, you just can’t get rid of it. It’s weird, sometimes the first thing that you think of seems to stick. When you try, you just can’t think of anything else. So that was the title and he came back with these lyrics, which are completely different than I would write, but they’re so Dan Reed.”

That’s the beauty of co-writing, you’ll get a song that you could never come up with on your own…

“Yeah, and I’m really enjoying it. It’s opening up a new world. I have written with other people outside of when I was in the Quireboys, but this being the main sort of project, it’s nice to be able to have the freedom now. I’m not precious at all about who has the song on the record or if we do a cover. That’s why there are a couple of covers on the album, because, if I go and see a band, I just want to hear the best songs – I don’t care who wrote them, other than being curious as a musician. So I want to have the strongest sound I can.

“Before, Paul Guerin our guitar player, he’d probably contribute maybe one or two songs to Quireboys albums. But then it was down to me to come up with all the actual initial ideas for everything. I just found that… You can be inspired for five or six songs, and every now and then you you’ve got loads of things come out, but it’s nice to be able to have the option to see if other people have got ideas. This project’s not tied to one particular type of thing. We can do different styles and, within doing that, it starts to make its own sound as well.”

Do you see an album as something that should be listened to from start to finish, or is that slightly less important today than it perhaps was 20 years ago?

“I think it’s still important, especially to a certain segment of society who still want that. People of our age, we grew up with that, even down to having the physical thing – like a vinyl or a CD. I can see why people still want to buy a CD. They’re probably not ever going to play it, but they may be reading the booklet while they’re listening to it on their Alexa or on Spotify, whatever.”

Once the songs are written, how do you work out which ones are going to go on the album and in what order?

“To be honest, it was a long process making this album. Then, right at the last minute, it’s like, ‘It’s gotta be finished next week,’ and it was this whole thing. I just did a tracklisting, and everybody pretty much agreed on it. Then, after the fact, I was talking with a publisher the other day and he goes, ‘I would have put so-and-so track four,’ but it had gone to the pressing plant. I’m not going to worry too much about it.

“I suppose, you’ve got to make a little bit of a statement with your first song, but at the same time, you don’t want to scare people off. It’s all very well coming out with a song that’s different, but it can be a bit jarring to people who’ve followed you for years. The first song we released, maybe it’s quite an obvious one. I love the song, and it’s not even a song I wrote.”

Foolin’ Yourself?

Foolin’ Yourself, yeah. It’s a rock and roller/Atlantic Crossing Rod Stewart-type thing. That was written by the guys from Company Of Wolves, which were a band from New York who were in the adjacent studio to the Quireboys when we first went out to Los Angeles in 1989. We were making our debut album in a studio called Cherokee Studios, and they were in the next studio, I think they were on Atlantic Records. They were a really fantastic band that came out around the same time as us and The Black Crowes and all that sort of stuff. But it didn’t quite hit and this was actually a song that was a demo from 1989.

“When I was talking to Steve Conte, the guitar player who plays with Michael Monroe now. He was in the New York Dolls and has played with a lot of people. I’d asked him to play on the track Savoir Faire, which is by the band Mink DeVille, with the singer Willie de Ville, a New York band as well. He actually did a tour with Willie de Ville, playing guitar. I thought it’d be great to get Steve to play some lead on that, and he’s plays a fantastic solo.

“I just said, ‘Oh, if you got any riffs knocking about…,’ and he says, ‘Well, I’ve got something I think might really suit you guys’. So I said, ‘Send it over.’ I listened to it, and I thought we could really do something good with it. It was right up our street, so we re-recorded it. The arrangement didn’t need changing. It could have been one of those things where I could have been like, ‘I’ll change this and I’ll change that,’ just to get my name on it. But, for better or worse, that’s not really how I think. I just think, ‘I’ve been gifted a great song here.’”

Guy Griffin. Photo: Michelle Livings

Guy Griffin: “There’s no tried and tested formula of doing anything now in the music business.” Photo: Michelle Livings

A common theme of the songs on the album seems to be that you just chose the right songs for the moment without overthinking it…

“It’s the first album I’ve done that’s been as collaborative as this. As I said, with The Quireboys I was the chief songwriter in that band, bringing everything in for years and years. Previous to that, when The Quireboys split up in the 90s, I had a band called Glimmer, and we were signed to Atlantic Records in the U.S. All the songs were written by myself, so it’s always been a bit of a solitary process, a little bit of a lonely process in a way. When the pressure’s on, it feels very lonely.

“It’s not like we’ve made a template for ourselves, because I don’t want to do that… I just want to see where it goes, you know. We’re not getting tethered down to the next record is going to have loads of guests and stuff. It may do. It may not. I’m not sure yet. I think it probably will have a couple of guests on the next album as well, because a couple of people have asked me about it, which is really nice. It’s nice to have recognition from fellow musicians.”

Is that the plan: release this album, take it on tour, work up another album…?

“In an ideal world, yeah, but there’s no tried and tested formula of doing anything now in the music business, especially in the rock ‘n’ roll/rock end of it. With any genre of music, whether it’s blues, country, or whatever, it’s getting harder and harder logistically to go out on the road, unless it’s very well planned, or you hook onto a support tour… Obviously, you’ve got festivals. We’ve got a couple of festivals coming through this summer, but it’s still very early days with this.

“We’ve got this song out, which is getting a really nice reaction. We’ve put a video out, and it’s getting a lot of views. Everyone seems to be happy with the video. That’s a big thing now, you have to try and present everything in a good way. It’s nice to be able to present stuff in a way I want to present it without having to compromise it. Visually, and videos, and even how it’s advertised, it’s nice to have a bit more control over that now, to be able to do that how we want to do it.”

Do you feel re-energised by this project, both as a songwriter and in general?

“Definitely. I’ve had a rough two or three years. We lost one of the guys from the old band, Guy Bailey – he passed away. Then my brother passed away, which influenced one of the songs, Autumn Rains, that was written just after. Charlie Starr on that song was unbelievable. What he sent back to me would bring a tear to your eye, it was amazing – both vocally and the guitar he put on that. So it was really gratifying and really humbling, to have people like that on the record.

“Mike Tramp did an amazing job on Your True Colours. I heard that back, and I thought, ‘I don’t need to sing on this.’ It sounds amazing, what he sang. There was one part of the song where I listened to it and I said, ‘Mike, the second half of the middle eight, you sang it in the wrong timing.’ And he goes, ‘Well, you just sing it then.’ So I sang it, I’m on one bit of the song and it works. But in the end, it’s great to have all these people on it.

“I’m almost six months sober as well, which has made a hell of a difference. It’s a big change in my life, and it’s amazing, just dealing with things with a clear head and getting a lot more done. There are so many people in the industry who are alcohol-free and seem to do very well for themselves, mainly because they seem to get things done.”

Did that influence the album at all?

“Actually, another one of the first songs was Medicine, by this American band called Buckcherry. I’ve known one of the guitar players, Billy Rowe, since 1989. His band lived over the street from our band, all that kind of thing. But Stevie [D.], the guitar player, I’ve become good friends with, and those guys have been clean and sober for about 20 years.

“I was sort of at a low point at one point. I needed to talk to him about the record anyway, just about a mix thing, or getting him to play a guitar part. We got chatting and stuff, and he was quite instrumental in me going down a different path, a better path. So that was from doing this record, really, because I wouldn’t have had that chat with him if we hadn’t been working on a song together.”

Any final thoughts on what you’d like your existing fans or new fans to take, take from this?

“Well, it’s just a new chapter. This is a new chapter, and there’ll be a lot more interesting and stronger stuff coming out in the future. There’s nothing hindering us, and there’s nothing stopping us from chasing the dream we’ve got, creatively and how we want to present things. There’s no doors shut to us and we can just explore all things now.”

Cowboys In Pinstriped Suits by Black Eyed Sons is out on 31 January via Off Yer Rocka Recordings. Find out more via their Facebook page @BlackEyedSonsOfficial




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