Gavin Mart

What is ironic about the avalanche of interest showered on Gavin Mart and the Saturday Vandals is that it comes after years of dues-paying. Far from being a gauche newcomer, Mart spent years serving a grueling musical apprenticeship as a drummer on the European rock scene.

Having been born in Sheffield, Gavin was brought up in North Wales. "I was given a break playing drums for singer songwriter Derek Bond..." He commented, "It was the happiest time of my life living there, along the coast, and Derek remains a true friend and musical hero." He continued, "In my late teens and early 20’s I toured with several different bands, firstly my first love 'Fractal Edge' a drum and bass type outfit in London, but the main band was called Dare.

They are an established AOR band; the lead singer was Darren Wharton who was Keyboard Player in Thin Lizzy previously. So I got a fantastic break as a drummer with them.

He and Dare taught me how to ‘go on’ in the music business. We supported dozens of major acts across Europe including Shirley Bassey, she was the first woman from Wales to make it in the industry. Dare introduced me to playing on the ‘pro scene’ with a wide variety of people; Killers, Ten, Motorhead, Asia, Barclay James Harvest, Magnum, Thunder, to kind of set the scene…"

Musically, things were in a state of change for Gavin. "I'd moved on [from Dare], I wanted to be a singer rather than a drummer, in my heart of hearts. I knew that there was something different around the corner, and life pulled me to Leeds. I started writing heavily, I was writing about the things around me, about the things I was going through in my own life; somehow I needed to get that out. It needed to be out there, being listened to and being sung by me. It was a natural progression from one thing to another, it was always going to happen, it was just a question of when."

Gavin recorded a single, "Patiently". The songsmith spoke about the song. "It's Ecclesiastical frustration; it's a philosopher's frustration. The song was written about a protest march that happened around 2003 when Britain declared war on Iraq and two million people launched themselves down to London to protest against going to war. My parents went down, my sister went down, a lot of my family went down, and they marched through the streets of London and they said, 'We don't want to do this; we don't believe there are weapons of mass destruction'. I couldn't make it down to London, but what I did do was I went down into my basement in Leeds. I was so frustrated about the march, because I knew nothing was going to come of it, and I sat down and wrote that song in five minutes from start to finish. It's about that march, but the thing is with song writing, once you start to look deep inside. . .

Stints with a couple of fledgling bands around Leeds most notably with 'revive' and in Sheffield with Joe Rose, bore only a frustrated fruit and little progress. The idea of such frustrations led to an EP to which Gavin aptly names 'Progress', six often dark hewn songs, including "Patiently" and a particularly poignant song, "Heriwood", about a young man with learning difficulties with whom Gavin had gone to school and who died a sad and lonely death. Remembered the songwriter, "He had great teachers around him who were giving him good, sound advice but that advice just didn't compute somehow and he made a decision to get out of there. The song is suggesting that there are people who need an extra helping hand and perhaps a different type of education to the one he had, something our educational system often overlooks. I'm trying to defend Heriwood in the song; he was my friend, I don't think he got a hearing in life. He couldn't quite get out of his head what he wanted to say and he killed himself. But he died without a cause and he never said anything to the world apart from in his suicide. I really wanted to write a song which would keep his name in the world somehow. Without that, would anyone speak the name Heriwood again? I wanted to write a song that had such a hook in it that people would sing it over and over and it would be so catchy that it would be about keeping this guy's name alive."

Judging from the popularity of "Heriwood" during Gavin's live performances he has succeeded. Equally powerful is the 'Progress' title track. Explained Gavin, "It's about a man who's trying to find out where he fits in. He's got dreams and ideas and nothing quite seems to happen, nothing seems to land, and he's having a conversation, possibly with God or perhaps just out into the open. He's having a conversation, he's having a rant, and he's having a look back over his young adult years and asking what sorts of things he has bought into. He's got a couple of mortgages, he lives in a society which invests in credit. He's asking, can he exist in that kind of society without having a job?