Biography

Greg Wise met Matthew Street in the summer of 1997. Greg was 19 and Matthew 23. Both enjoyed the shared prison cell of dead-end jobs in a slowly decaying, faceless American financial services company in Uxbridge, Middlesex at the arse-end of the Metropolitan line. The pair had started to discuss guitar music and swapped some CDs, and subsequently struck up a friendship, fuelled partly by the fact that both played the guitar and wrote songs. Matthew was a failed artist and poet, and had spent the years he was supposed to be studying for a Maths degree as a hired gun around his university town of Guildford, Surrey, playing guitar in a number of ultimately doomed and forgettable bands. Greg had spent his mid to late teens learning his worn-out Nirvana CDs on a battered, old Fender acoustic and only getting as far as the rehearsal room with a couple of nothing bands.

Matthew had recently got together with old friend Jody with whom he had played in a band when he was still at school. Matthew and Jody had booked a few sessions in Absolute studios to jam on guitar and drums and to basically see what happened. What did happen was that Jody had a serious car accident and was laid up in hospital for months. Without wanting to play on his own Matthew took Greg to Absolute in the late autumn of 1997 to fulfil the bookings and to play Greg some of his songs. They ended up bouncing riffs and melodies off one another and decided, that night, to form a band although neither really knew any musicians that were a) available and b) shared their love of rock and alt. Country such as The Replacements, Afghan Whigs, Buffalo Tom and Evan Dando. It was the late 90s, a dire time for music (although a new Labour Government with old Conservative policies and their own fresh bullshit tried to convince everyone otherwise), and the airwaves of the nation were plagued shitpop and if you advertised for musicians and didn’t mention Oasis, Blur, Shed 7 or The Bluetones then you got no response.

Through his brother Barry, Greg came across some basic recording equipment, some mikes, a small mixing board and a pair of standard 4 track cassette decks, and set about laying down some acoustic covers and a few of his own songs by bouncing track to track between the two cassette desks. Still without band-mates, Matthew sold his Crafter acoustic and invested in a cheap drum machine and a bass guitar to accompany themselves with. By now it’s sometime in mid-winter 1998, and still stuck working day-jobs they hate for money they can’t use Greg and Matthew decide to record a couple of songs in Greg’s bedroom on the 2nd floor of his house in North Harrow, North West London.

Running late to a last-minute trip to the off-licence to buy some Molson Dry, and realising that he has promised to write a 90-second punk song for the short session, Matthew writes “honey” in 5 minutes, and using a hastily put-together 4/4 drum pattern record the song along with “down” and the now almost mythical lost song “only over you”. The songs almost exclusively being broken love-songs to girls they haven’t yet met. Before, this one and only tape is tragically destroyed by over-playing in the stereo of Greg’s car (they didn’t think to make a copy) Greg forces the tape on anyone that will listen, and generally gets a very good response.

In late 1999 the two get their first slice of good luck when their company relocates to the South West and both get made redundant. Matthew buys a mixing desk, a sampler, a synth and some professional mikes and the pair set about demoing up at least 20 songs, again forcing friends and family to listen to them to the point of irritation. One of Greg’s new work colleagues Dan Martin hears the demos and likes them, he agrees to rehearse as the bass player with the band now under the name The Loved (Matthew getting the name from the Cranes album taking it to mean ‘loved’ in the past-tense). The three work as a trio (still missing a drummer) for a few months until eventually in early winter 2001 a new work colleague of Matthew’s explains that he knows a young drummer who might be interested in joining a band and that he will pass on a CD.

Matthew, Dan and Greg meet Gavin Turner at The Gate pub in Northwood a few weeks later, after he has given the demo CD a listen, the youngster gets drunk on weak lager and talks technical shit about drums. However, when he talks about music Gavin makes it clear that he loves Husker Du, Afghan Whigs and the Deftones, encouraging the embryonic Loved to invite him to a rehearsal. A week or so later Matthew books a damp shack sandwiched between the river Colne and the flooded Donkey Lane gravel works. The session does not go well and they leave despondent. Dan went AWOL after a few subsequent sessions at the dryer (and warmer) Las Vegas studios in Perivale and hasn’t been heard from since. Gav, Matthew and Greg stick out the difficult early stages and moving on to Survival studios in Acton, continue to work hard through early 2003 with the hope of gigging by spring 2003 providing they can find a bass player. This proved next to impossible and the three (fuelled by the White Stripes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs idea to just not bother with one)considered playing without a bassist.

That summer, one of Matthew and Greg’s closest friends decided to give up on England and travel to the Far East for a year and a half. He tells Matthew that he expected a local gig before he leaves and makes Matthew promiseto arrange one. This he hastily does and Matthew books the legendary (locally anyway) Anglers Retreat venue in West Drayton for the Loved to make their live debut. Two friends of Gav’s, Jay and Alex try out on bass but decide that thay can’t playat the gig, leaving the Loved bassless with just 6 days left to the gig. Then by chance, while promoting the night to some friends, Greg forwards an e-mail to Charlie Reay-Smith, an old friend of his and his brother’s. Charlie was fronting his own band Doppler (and still does, check www.Doppler.com) and had played in various others on the London scene. Charlie agreed that if Greg forwarded him a CD, he would have no problems learning the songs that night and that in two rehearsals should be able to nail the set. True to his word, Charlie joins the Loved at Survival on the Saturday and Sunday and performs brilliantly at the rehearsal, booking himself a place onstage for the coming Tuesday night.