Interview: Skeletal Family - January 2024

Interview with

Anneka Latta (vocals), Stan Greenwood (guitar), Roger “Trotwood” Nowell (bass) and Ian “Karl Heinz” Taylor (keyboards and saxophone) from Skeletal Family

One of the great West Yorkshire bands from the 80s, Keighley based SKELETAL FAMILY, have stood the test of time, with a rich history, enviable longevity and international success that many bands strive for. Born out of the Punk and Post-Punk era, SKELETAL FAMILY had an impressive discography and released many unforgettable tracks like ‘Promised Land’ and ‘Alone She Cries’. This earned the band a hard-core fan base.

SKELETAL FAMILY’s original incarnation was a punk band called SULPHATE ATTACK in 1979, formed by Stan Greenwood, Roger Nowell and Ian “Karl Heinz” Taylor with Simeon Warburton on vocals. (Simeon would go on to sing with his own band DORMANNU who had brief popularity between 1983 and 1985). SULPHATE ATTACK then became THE ELEMENTS with Jayne Tretton on vocals. The band finally changed their name to SKELETAL FAMILY in 1983, now fronted by Anne-Marie Hurst - who left in 1985 to form GHOST DANCE with Gary Marx (ex-SISTERS OF MERCY). SKELETAL FAMILY continued with a new vocalist: Katrina Phillips, however the group disbanded in 1987 - leaving many disappointed fans in their wake. The band reformed in 2002 and have had several vocalists (including Anne-Marie Hurst who has now reformed GHOST DANCE).

Ever since lockdown ended, SKELETAL FAMILY have been enjoying a resurgence in popularity - introducing Anneka Latta on vocals, with Adrian “Ozzy” Ozadzenco on drums - as well as the three original members (Stan, Roger and Karl Heinz). Anneka’s first public performance was at the tender age of fourteen in her family’s local pub on her birthday. She went on to form EXOTERIK a few years later and joined SKELETAL FAMILY in 2021. Anneka’s etheric stage presence and astonishing vocals have proved very popular. The band have not only retained their loyal fan base from the original SKELETAL FAMILY, but continue to pick up new ones on tour. Their latest album: ‘Light from the Dark’ had over 40,000 streams on the first day it was released in April 2023. The band played at WGT in Leipzig last year and went on to tour in Europe, UK and the US - including the Darker Waves Festival in California in November. As well as SKELETAL FAMILY, Stan also tours with THE LENE LOVICH BAND and Roger has recently toured with CULTURE CLUB and BERLIN.

I caught up with Anneka, Stan, Roger and a duo of Karl Heinz’s - who appeared on two screens - via Zoom on a Sunday evening as they prepared to play at the Antenna Festival here in Leeds (except Roger who will be on tour with PAUL WELLER in Puerto Rico). They chat about touring, Yorkshire Tea and collapsing ceilings!

Reflections of Darkness [RoD]: Good evening, thank you for joining me. So you just played the US, how was that?
Anneka: It was a lot of fun, busy schedule wasn’t it?
Roger: It just kind of went fast, we didn’t really have time to stop and think, did we?
Anneka: No, it was pretty much kind of… get to the airport, get to a motel, get to a gig, get to a motel, get to gig, get to a motel (laughs), get to gig. Not really time to see anything, but great experience - a lot of fun.
Roger: Gigs were good, that’s the main thing.

RoD: Was it just the west coast (of the US) that you did?
Roger: Yeah, the Sunshine coast. Well… half of it was sunshine, Seattle was a little bit cold.

RoD: Yeah, I saw that you went all the way up to Seattle, didn’t you.
Roger: We don’t do things by halves!
Karl Heinz [KH]: The Sierra Nevada was quite cold!
Anneka: I think when we landed, it was about twenty two degrees, then went to about minus something.
Stan: I think the thing is though, we got confirmation of the Darker Waves festival pretty late on. Normally with confirmed dates, you get like a year in advance to plan them. We had about four months to plan the tour. We were kind of going up and down and normally, it wouldn’t be like that. It was a necessity, we had to actually recoup some money back playing these additional dates.



RoD: And it’s a lot harder now to book gigs at the last minute, as venues are closing down, same over here.
Roger: I think everybody books way in advance, you’ve just got to make sure you get in there.

RoD: So did you fly whilst you were on tour, on hire a van and take in the sights?
Anneka: Well we needed a plane to cross the water (laughs). No, we flew to get to the festival, but the rest of it was by road.
KH: Yeah Roger managed to get the last minibus in Los Angeles (laughs).
Roger: Yeah, there were a lot of things against us that weekend - Grand Prix in Vegas and big festivals… and holiday week of course, cos it was Thanksgiving!
Stan: So we were really lucky actually - getting some transport.

RoD: Did you play Vegas?
Roger: Yep… straight after Darker Waves, so it was a bit of a come down really, rather than being a big thing!
Anneka: It was good though. It was a great venue - the Backstage Bar and Billiards. We played with a band called URBAN HEAT that played with us at the Darker Waves as well, so that was a lot of fun.
Roger: The gig was great, it’s just after you’ve just done a big festival like Darker Waves and then the next day, you are back to doing a club, it’s like - “Ah, back to the bread and butter gigs (laughs).”
Stan: It would have been better the other way round, wouldn’t it - if the ultimate gig had been the festival, but it was bizarre that first we were playing at the is big festival, and then at… not small gigs, but kind of medium sized venues on the west coast.
Anneka: Yeah, it kind of felt like the festival should have been the pinnacle of it all - like the big party at the end, but we started with it (laughs). So, it felt a little bit backwards in that sense, but we had a lot of fun. Every venue was great - you know - the crowds were really good and the hospitality of the venues.

RoD: How does playing in the US compare to playing in the UK?
Stan: More appreciative audiences I think.
Roger: And more of them, the venues are very organized, so we find it better in some respects… not that England or Europe are worse. It’s just more organized in the States.
Anneka: The US audiences were certainly appreciative, it’s also nice to be able to get out and mingle a little bit before and after gauge the audience reaction… which seemed to be really positive.

RoD: Do you get people coming up and asking for selfies, stuff signed over there?
Anneka: Well, I think that goes with the territory.
Stan: Yeah, all the time. It’s bizarre… I mean, you sometimes talk to people over here and I don’t know whether they believe that we have such a huge following in America and South America - like we’ve played Mexico City. I think they think that we are bullshitting - but we’re not!

RoD: Yeah, I only recently found out that there was huge alternative scene in South America, because you don’t hear of the bands there as they are from countries like Chile that are kind of closed off. There is a lot of talent there and they love British bands too.
KH: Yeah, they don’t seem to cross over really, the only one I’ve heard of was an EBM band called Hoicico.

RoD: Did you play anywhere else in LA or just Darker Waves?
Roger: No, we finished in Santa Ana sort of on the outskirts of LA.
Anneka: The night before the Darker Waves, we played the Paramount - which was a bit of a warm-up gig. Also, we had hired the equipment, so we had to make sure that it worked before the festival. So, it was a useful gig to have and there were some lovely people there - great crowd. It’s nice to get out and play America for the first time.
Roger: And we have plans to go back and play the East Coast as well.
Stan: The thing about SKELETAL FAMILY is… we seem to end up on a lot of these playlists like Deathrock and then we get lumped in with that scene. I would never really class SKELETAL FAMILY as a Deathrock band, but we do get featured in a lot of these vinyl compilations and a lot of playlists. A lot of our stuff is not really that depressing… more up tempo (laughs), but we’ve still got that kind of association with it [Deathrock]. We never really pigeon-hole ourselves, of course, but our music seems to go down well with the audience.



RoD: When you are over in the US or Europe, what do you most look forward to about coming back to Yorkshire?
Anneka: A cup of tea!
KH: Oh Yeah!
Roger: A proper cup of tea! One thing they can’t do over there is make tea - they’re not bad at coffee!
Anneka: Especially Yorkshire tea, I think - although when we played Darker Waves, they had Yorkshire tea - I was very impressed!
Stan: Really? Mind you, I suppose these days, you can pick up anything, anywhere in the world, so it’s not like it used to be. I just like to come home, because after ten days when you have to be available to people all the time and you don’t get much sleep so I just look forward to having a good kip [sleep].
Anneka: Yeah - in your own bed! And of course, you’re glad to see your friends and family (laughs).
Stan: Well, this was such a lightning tour, that often you would play a gig - say in Vegas, then have to travel like three hundred mile to the next one, then get to your motel at four o’clock in the morning, get up at one o’clock then the next day do it all over again. You get totally disorientated and then you were going straight to the sound check. We didn’t really get any time off, it was constant travelling.

RoD: Didn’t you play in Oregon? That looks such a beautiful place to travel through.
Anneka: We did yes - Portland, Oregon, unfortunately, we only saw the scenery through the car window, but it did look like a lovely place! It’s one of those places where you come back from and people say, “Tell me about America, what did you see?” and I reply, “Well Portland looked like it was nice…(laughs).
Stan: When you are going South in Los Angeles, you just get desert because it’s so warm, but going up towards Portland and later Seattle, it’s minus ten degrees so obviously, up there it’s a lot greener… a lot of redwood trees. Going down the other way, it gets sparse and there is nothing but rocks and tumbleweed. So yeah, if you are travelling for six hours, the scenery changes quite a bit, but at first, it all looks the same coming out of LA, so you just fall asleep.
Anneka: There was one time on the road - I think we were heading to Vegas at the time, when all of a sudden, we got one of those emergency alerts on our phones. Do you remember? (laughs).
Stan: God yeah - that test thing, wasn’t it.
Anneka: So, everyone’s phones started going, “Beep, beep, beep, warning, warning!” Then another phone would go, then another one and it’s like: “What’s going on?” It said, “Pull over now,” something about a sandstorm!
Stan: Yeah, and obviously they’re on the freeway, so nobody even bothered, did they, so… we just carried on and nothing happened.
All: laugh
Roger: It’s too late now if it did!
Anneka: Rock and roll!

RoD: So you’re playing at the Antenna Festival in Leeds on the 13th of January, are you ready for that? I imagine that there will be a lot of familiar faces there.
Stan: Yeah, there will probably be a lot of people there who we saw last night at SALVATION in Leeds.
Anneka: We’re looking forward to it. Antenna is going to be the first gig of the new year… first gig since America as well, so we’ve taken a bit of a break over Christmas and… back to it!
Stan: Yeah, rehearsals are sounding good aren’t they, so we should be on top form!

RoD: So Anneka you must be feeling really embedded within SKELETAL FAMILY now?
Anneka: Definitely, yeah, I mean it’s been quite a while now - think it was 2021, so it has been a while. It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long… like… gigging, but I guess that’s because of Covid and everything, but I’ve been gigging with them a year now!

RoD: I bet the last few months have been a whirlwind!
Anneka: (Laughs) Yeah - definitely!
Roger: Yeah, just do it all at once!

RoD: Thrown in the deep end!
AnnekaThat’s it - [We’ve] done a little bit of America and a little bit of Europe, that’s a nice thing to do in a year.



RoD: How is the album going? Did you sell loads more in the US?
Roger: We did alright in America, we keep the CD’s ticking over, though we are still having problems with the vinyl - which will hopefully be sorted out over the next week or so.
Anneka: The sales are kind of out of our hands because it’s all really with the record company - so they’ll have all the stats. We just go and play (laughs) - and hope for the best.
Roger: They sell well on the merch stalls and the ones we’ve got, so it’s ticking over.
Stan: And the digital downloads, Bandcamp thing - we probably sell about three or four albums a day off that and then physical sales, two or three a day. So yes, it’s not mega sales, but it’s ticking away!
Anneka: And then looking at YouTube as well, cos obviously the three singles are on YouTube and they keep going up with views as well.
Stan: Yeah, and the Apple and Spotify plays… SKELETAL FAMILY over the years have probably released about hundred and twenty songs and at the moment, ‘Cry Baby’ has been the top four for about the last fifteen months. That’s a really good sign for us.

RoD: So what is on the horizon for SKELETAL FAMILY after Antenna?
Anneka: Well we have a few gigs lined up already, in the UK. We’re planning to record some new songs as well… so we’re certainly discussing that and getting things prepared to go down that route a little bit. It’s all a bit: “Watch this space!” There are lots of ideas that we just need to cement!
Roger: Yeah, there are lots of things going on in the background - most of which are good. The studio collapsing was bad.
Anneka: We have no rehearsal room, currently - which is delaying us a little bit, because we’ve all got ideas for new songs that we have been throwing around each other - but we don’t have a space to actually get together! That’s given us a little bit of a delay but…
Roger: We’ll get round it!
Anneka: We’ll find somewhere!
Roger: Somewhere where the ceiling doesn’t fall in!
Anneka: Somewhere where there’s no risk of death! (laughs)
Roger: Or at least a sore head!

RoD: Well I know that you have a good space [The Green Room] at Antenna and Stan, you’ll have two “hats” on that day!
Stan: Exactly, SKELETAL FAMILY and LENE LOVICH - two hats as you say. I think SKELETAL FAMILY are playing about five o’clock and LENE LOVICH BAND is on about nine o'clock, so that’s a few hours between them. I’ve got a lot of songs to relearn!

RoD: I’m looking forward to that also, as I’ve never seen LENE LOVICH live.
Stan: Well it’s bizarre, because she’s not been back to America for thirty years and she came to Seattle to visit her mother and she actually came to see us at the show in Seattle, so that was a little surreal!

RoD: Well that’s great, thank you so much and I’ll see you all on Saturday at Antenna!
All: Thank you.

Website: https://skeletalfamily.com/
Pictures by Mike’s Photography (https://linktr.ee/mikesphotography)