Interview withAnne-Marie Hurst (vocals), Tim Walker (guitar), Phil Noble (bass) and Dave Wood (drums) from Ghost Dance
You know you’ve made it as a band when you have an army of dedicated followers - who return three decades later, to continue where they left off. Well GHOST DANCE had just that - the aptly named ‘Spook Squad’ - who would follow the band all over the UK and sometimes Europe too. GHOST DANCE were one of the most well-known and loved bands of the UK Goth / Alternative scene.
They were formed in 1985, in the West Yorkshire town of Keighley (famous for its steam train and Peter Mayhew of Star Wars fame), by Anne-Marie Hurst the original vocalist of SKELETAL FAMILY (vocals) and Gary Marx ex-SISTERS OF MERCY (guitars). GHOST DANCE went on to be one of the most successful bands of that era had many dance-floor hits in alternative clubs - such as ‘Last Train’ and ‘Down to the wire’ which reached position 66 in the UK singles chart. In 1988, they signed to major record label Chrysalis, only to disband in 1989. In 2019, however, Anne-Marie reformed GHOST DANCE- to the delight of fans. This time with a new line-up - Tim Walker (guitars), Stephen Derrig (guitars), Phil Noble (bass guitar) and Dave Wood (Drums). Tim, Phil and Dave were all previously with HARLEQUYN, whilst Steve was in ORIGINAL SIN.
The following year however, the country was in lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The band were disappointed, but used the time productively and emerged after lockdown was over, with new material and ready to start touring. In 2022, they were soon packing out venues all over the UK. They have just released a brand new album ‘The Silent Shout’ to coincide with a UK-wide tour. The album, which was released on 5th May, was number 1 in the iTunes download chart within days. I catch up with Anne-Marie. Tim, Dave and Phil ahead of the last night of their tour at The Lending Room, in Leeds. We’re in the modest dressing room, down the hall from the function room, huddled round a table. This is the final night of their most recent tour and the band have just finished their sound check which according to a Facebook friend who was present, “Is sounding brilliant.”
Reflections of Darkness [RoD]: You are on the last night of your UK tour… back in your native West Yorkshire. What have been the highlights?
Phil: Being together.
Anne Marie: Yeah, being together. Bedford was really good wasn’t it?
Phil: Yeah, Bedford was great, I really liked London.
Anne-Marie: Yeah, London was good, there’s been a lot of highlights, we’ve enjoyed playing and we’ve had a lot of really good crowds. I think the only disappointing thing, was when Whitby was on and we lost a certain amount of people then - but we had a good practice so it was good. I think the hard gigs makes you better and better able to deal with smaller crowds.
Dave: Leicester was hot, sold out.
Anne-Marie: Yeah, and it was a fantastic crowd. It’s just been received really well.
Phil: The reaction to the new stuff, we’ve already had people singing along to the new songs. They were out for ten minutes and we had people singing along, it was absolutely brilliant.
RoD: Do you have any funny anecdotes to tell us about the tour?
Anne-Marie: We all drove up around the country together and we got a lot closer but we just howled laughing the whole time. We called the tour van the nursing home.
Dave: Cos everybody was forgetting what they were doing and halfway through the conversation, somebody would lose track of what they were talking about (laughs). It was like: “What do they call those things that hamsters run? Those wheels that hamsters run.
Phil: Hamster Wheels?
Dave: Yeah - that’s it!
All: (laughing)
RoD: Speaking of wheels - Tim, I see from Facebook that you are an avid skateboard fan. Did you take your skateboard on tour?
Tim: No, they wouldn’t let me, they were scared I was going to break something. I did actually find a board in Reading. I had a little tic-tac in Reading.
Dave: There’s one in the dressing room.
Anne-Marie: You’ve had a bag given though, haven’t you? A long board. We just don’t want you to fall backwards though, cos if you did… you’d end up down the road!
RoD: And you recently played Antenna festival here in Leeds. A very popular event with other Yorkshire bands: SALVATION, THE ROSE OF AVALANCHE and DANSE SOCIETY. How did it feel to be part of this big nostalgic kind of reunion?
Anne-Marie: We really enjoyed it, unfortunately we didn’t have Dave with us because…
Dave: …everybody was ill.
Anne-Marie: We were all ill, yeah, it was a shame - I mean, we nearly had to pull it because I had no voice at all, my voice was completely gone - so I was just drinking honey and lemon before I went on stage and it was just - miraculously…
Phil: Every song was like a voyage of discovery wasn’t it?
Anne-Marie: Yeah!
Phil: (High pitched) Is it going to go? Is it going to be alright (laughs).
RoD: You couldn’t tell!
Anne-Marie: I had to sing more gently, didn’t I.
Phil: For me personally that gig - cos I grew up in Calverley - the village next door. Me and my friends used to play in that place (The Old Woollen), when it was actually a mill and we used to get kicked out for breaking in (laughs). To be there legitimately is quite a thing!
Dave: I can’t remember that far back.
Tim: 1830 or something?
Phil: Yeah, absolutely. I had to get up before the sun (laughs).
RoD: I only found out about it (The Old Woollen) last year. It’s a fantastic place.
Anne-Marie: Yeah it is, it’s Choque (Hossein - BLACK STAR LINER, SALVATION, THE HOLLOW MEN) who’s got it, isn’t it.
RoD: Alan Davies (THE ROSE OF AVALANCHE) was saying that you were all in a yoga studio.
Anne-Marie: Yeah, we were, yeah, yeah, upstairs, surrounded by balloons!
Dave: It looks like I’m balloon phobic!
All: (Laughing)
RoD: So, how many of the old Spook squad have you retained? All of them?
Anne-Marie: Yes, the majority of them, yeah!
RoD: I imagine you have gained a few new ones?
Anne-Marie: We’ve gained an awful lot, yeah, I mean, they’ve been on the old website - which is GHOST DANCE 85-89 and then obviously, we’ve started up another Facebook but the two have like, crossed over now and it’s fabulous the fact that everybody in the band, has been accepted by the Spook Squad and they’re really enjoying it - happy to see GHOST DANCE out again, I think.
RoD: What do you attribute the success of the band to?
Anne-Marie: We’re really nice people.
All: Yeah!
RoD: I admit, that was one of the reasons I wanted to interview you, was because when I saw you at the Wardrobe (venue in Leeds), you were so friendly and wondering round chatting to people. It’s taken three years but - here we are!
Anne-Marie: It has!
RoD: Well everybody had a year (or more) off soon afterwards didn’t they!
Anne-Marie: Yeah, but we didn’t want one though did we?
RoD: No cos you had just reformed - the same with THE ROSE OF AVALANCHE.
Phil: It did inspire us to do more on the album, because we were meant to start doing gigs. We did one gig and then lockdown happened so we were just kind of sitting round wondering what to do and so we said, “Let’s write new stuff!” So as soon as we did that, we were quite happy with the first song ‘Falling down’ and then we said, “Let’s make an album!” So that really pushed us to do it really didn’t it?
Anne-Marie: It did, yeah!
Phil: Normally, you start those things, you get a big flurry (of activity) and we actually picked up pace with it, didn’t we!
Dave: Well we were sort of learning how to write together weren’t we really?
Anne-Marie: Yeah!
Phil: So that took us a bit to get into our stride, then ‘Jessamine’ we thought we’d got the feels, we’d got the sound - so from there, it just kind of went on a roll really, didn’t it.
Anne-Marie: It did yeah, it was great to be back in the studio though and I had plenty of time, cos normally - I used to say to the guys - the vocals are always the last thing to be done and they’ve always been rushed! I’ve always been disappointed with them, so working with Tim and the rest of the guys gave me so much encouragement and I think my vocals haven’t sounded as good for a long time.
RoD: Your vocals sound so much more sophisticated now than the early GHOST DANCE.
Anne-Marie: Thank you.
RoD: You sound very much like Debbie Harry (BLONDIE) on the new stuff.
Anne-Marie: A lot of people have said that - yeah! I’d like hermoney (laughs).
RoD: And of course, now we’ll get to the album. Absolutely fantastic. I’ve been listening to it and seen really good feedback on social media. What was your favourite track to record?
Anne-Marie: Mine is Immortalise. I just love the guitars in that and the way it sets off acoustically and it really just moves - it flows. And ‘It rains’ I really like. That is a very emotional song. I actually cried when I was recording it. I burst into tears.
RoD: That’s when you know you’ve written a fantastic song isn’t it.
Phil: That’s actually the take that we kept.
Dave: I think we’ll have had a weep to that song at some point.
Anne-Marie: Yeah, we all have. We’ve all put our hearts and soul into that one haven’t we? The thing is, I’m still listening and even though we’ve had the recordings for a long time - and Tim’s done a fantastic job with the recordings and with the producing of it, I’m still hearing new things now. So, I like them all! I think ‘Immortalise’ is the one that I really do like at the moment.
Phil: It’s interesting that you say “At the moment” as mine keeps changing, I’ll be like “Oh yes, I like this one, I’ll listen to that all the time - and time and time again, I’ll hear different things every time”.
Dave: When we first started recording the album, Tim and I were talking about RADIOHEAD ‘The Bends’ and how we could listen to that album time and time and time again - and hear different things every time. We kind of used it a bit like a benchmark every time, so we’ll write the songs and then quite a lot of complexity goes into it, actually so every time you hear the song, you actually hear something different and I think it was a good benchmark to use for sure. Agree with me Timothy!
Tim: (Little voice) Yes David!
All: (laughing)
RoD: Back in the 80s, you bought records on vinyl, the music press was NME, Melody Maker and printed fanzines. How much do you think the scene has changed since then?
Anne-Marie: It’s changed completely. You’ve got the internet now. The problem I think that our band and a lot of the other older bands have is the fact that our fans didn’t grow up with computers and there are a lot who still don’t understand how it works. There’s a lot that do, but I’m hopeless on a computer. I didn’t have one at school so we weren’t taught about computers and things so what we’ve done with one, we’ve had to learn. These do a lot for me - an awful lot (laughs).
RoD: I didn’t realise that if you don’t download something - rather than just streaming, it doesn’t get counted, until you guys mentioned it the other day on Facebook!
Anne-Marie: Yes so it has changed from before, I mean we always had the Spook Squad who followed us around but it was always word of mouth. Somebody would phone… they would communicate between each other, rather than on the (internet) and they still do phone each other up and say, “Are you coming to Leeds? Are you coming to Bedford?”
RoD: And many of them used to hitch-hike to go and see bands.
Anne-Marie: So did I! We actually used to go to the M1 (Motorway in the UK)
RoD: You can’t do that now, they changed the layout. People don’t really pick up hitchhikers anymore.
Anne-Marie: We once picked one up and he had a pickaxe!
All: (Laughing)
Anne-Marie: And he didn’t look very friendly and I have never been so scared in all my life! I thought I was going to die!
Dave: Why did you pick him up if he had a pickaxe?
Anne-Marie: It wasn’t my idea!
RoD: What's next for GHOST DANCE? Apart from “Rebellion” in August?
Anne-Marie: We’re at “Rebellion”, but first we would like to do a couple of warm-up gigs and enjoy you know - the success of the album.
RoD: Have you been to “Rebellion” before?
Anne-Marie: Yes, played there before.
Dave: I’ve never been. I’ve been to Blackpool, but never been to “Rebellion”.
RoD: It’s brilliant, except you end up rushing about because there are so many bands on at the same time, at opposite ends of the venue.
Anne-Marie: It’s changed now because they’ve got an outdoor venue as well.
RoD: They made it a lot more mainstream last year didn’t they.
Anne-Marie: That was the year before, they had more mainstream bands like HEAVEN 17, so then they went more punk last year. I think what they had to do, was because of lockdown, they had to honour all the contracts that were already signed.
RoD: Well thank you so much for the interview and I look forward to the gig later.
All: Thank you.
Website: https://ghost-dance.co.uk/
Picture by Nick Taylor
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