From Rhythm Magazine
August 1997

Jon Brookes is Tellin' Tales…

From the top to the bottom and back to the top again, it's certainly been an exhausting journey for the Charlatans. Pat Reid meets Jon Brookes, a drummer on first name terms with life's little ups and downs…

Jon Brookes was just sixteen years old when he thought he'd got his big break. Summoned to Crystal Palace to play on demos by a guitarist with a publishing deal, he packed his suitcase and mentally prepared himself for the big time (having spent all his savings on four pairs of sticks and two snare heads). The guitarist spent hours searching for the 'right' drum sound and Jon ended up breaking all his new sticks. He struggled on regardless, giving it his all on the ride cymbal.

"After a while," Jon recounts, "the bloke said, 'Son, people don't use ride cymbals any more, no-one makes records like that now'."

Jon was gutted. He picked up his suitcase and went straight back home to the West Midlands. But he didn't change the way he played. Not for anyone. Which is just as well, because now he's in The Charlatans and he's had sixteen hits and three number one albums. And he hits his ride cymbal whenever he bloody well pleases - which is pretty often. As he puts it himself, "Yes!"

Jon grew up in West Bromwich, where his parents ran a pub, The Fox And Dogs. As they'd often sleep in during the day, having plied their late-night trade, the lonely youngster would amuse himself by playing around on the pub's drum kit.

"I just went and sat at the drum kit every day," he recalls. The pub had a resident dance band whose drummer, a bloke called Harvey, was happy to show Jon how to play various styles. From then on he would unfailingly get up and play in front of the punters until it was time for Harvey to sit in again.

"I got introduced to playing in public very early on," Jon recalls. 'After that I got bitten by the bug".

In the time-honoured tradition, Jon was introduced to a wealth of music by his two elder brothers, one was a rocker into Motorhead, Thin Lizzy and Rush ("There's a lot of information in rock records," Jon savers, "especially for young drummers"), the other was a reggae fan whose bedroom reverberated to the likes of Bob Marley, Third World and Peter Tosh. Coupled with the more traditional fare on offer in the pub, Jon was living in a musical melting pot without ever having to leave his front door.

"I had all these things going round in my head," he says. "And it's still coming out now."

After the usual teenage antics in school bands, Jon fell in with an R&B combo comprising a bunch of much older musicians. He found himself playing the pub circuit, covering everything from The Small Faces to ZZ Top. It was around this time that Jon had a fateful meeting with a certain Mr. Rob Collins ("I bumped into him at a local rehearsal room"). He also chanced upon one Martin Blunt, a local bassist in search of likeminded musical souls.

"Martin's a winner," Jon smirks. "He knew I was a drummer, but the reason he wanted me to play in his band was because I had a bleached-blonde skinhead haircut then, and he thought I looked quite cool. He goes, 'Wow, what a haircut, wanna play in my band?' " Jon lets loose a massive guffaw. "That haircut got me into the music industry," he beams.

Based in the Wolverhampton-Walsall area, Martin's band, The Gift Horses, wore flared trousers and played "pop with a '60s edge". Although he was at the time working as a gardener, Jon joined them for a three-week tour of Germany.

"We crashed the van," Jon remembers, "because our driver Derek had some flares on and he got them caught on the handbrake."

Questionable legwear aside, on his return to England, Jon decided that The Gift Horses didn't have that all-important 'vibe'. He quit on the spot and Martin promptly followed. The pair both loved Rob Collins' Hammond playing so they invited him to join them in their next musical project. Gigging around the North-West with a certain Baz Kettley on vocals, Brookes, Blunt and Collins encountered a youthful and charismatic Northwich singer by the name of Tim Burgess. After a swift rejigging of personnel, The Charlatans were under way.

Exploding into the national consciousness at the height of the Madchester indie-dance boom, The Charlatans exploited both their connection with the hallowed Stone Roses (to whom they often played support) and the fact that Manchester audiences had virtually adopted them anyway. It was a meteoric rise, or so it seemed to any reader of the music press back in '89-'90.

"Oh it was," Jon agrees. Two weeks after I left work I had young girls giggling outside my door. I was living at my mum's house; I couldn't believe it."

With 'The Only One I know' hitting the top ten and their debut album Some Friendly topping the charts, the band's first flush of success was dizzying.

"lt was incredible," Jon recalls, "selling out three-thousand seaters in Los Angeles. I mean, I was 21 and I'd bought a Mercedes-Benz. But luckily it didn't really affect me in a bad way. I just travelled a bit and saw the world."

And then, with the second album emerging in the post-Madchester haze, everything suddenly went into tailspin.
"Yeah," says ;on. "A bit of panic set in."

While guitarist Mark Collins (who joined the band in time for Between 10th And 11th) argues convincingly that the second album is a bit of an underrated gem at the time the media was ablaze with tales of the band's disintegration. Words like 'Depressive' and 'alcoholic' were flung at various members (and this was before Rob Collins' jail sentence further compounded the band's ill-fortunes). Jon remembers thinking that the thing he'd wanted all his life was about to be rudely wrenched away. The Charlatans, it seemed, had blown it.

"Something had to give at that point," he says, "and John Baker was the weak link in the chain. Not him as a person or a musician ... But something had to give."

Mark Collins was duly recruited and, although he claims he couldn't understand the others' accents for the first two years, his inventiveness and positivity gave the band a much needed boost.

"He took it on his shoulders really well," Jon enthuses, admitting that the founder members found themselves in the strange position of looking to the boyish newcomer for guidance. The critically-blasted second album opened with the hot-wired 'Weirdo' by far the funkiest thing the band had done.

"I think sonically the second LP has got really interesting sounds," says Jon. "I don't think the songwriting's that bad either."

It certainly didn't sound like a band in trouble, despite what certain journalists may have gladly imagined.
It's a press thing, mate." Jon reckons. "They're either your best friend or your worst enemy. They really gave us a kicking and we felt it. It hurt because we didn't feel we deserved it, really. All right, we'd got there on a breeze, we'd been in the right place at the right time. But we were good, we played well and we always had a hardcore following."
Charlatans fans, it must be said, are an extremely devoted bunch.

"You can't knock 'em," Jon grins, using the tone of approval normally reserved for favourite relatives. "That hardcore has kept us going. They've taken the records for what they are. The press is a catalyst, it plays an important part in any fashion or music. When you try and take on the press, you lose. You have to embrace it. And, fortunately for us, it's turned around again."

Which is true, you know. In a mere seven years, although, somehow it seems much longer, The Charlatans have gone from being the hippest band in Britain to being absolutely nowhere. Today, having doggedly clawed their way back from oblivion, they're the hippest band in Britain again. Everybody loves them, be they acid jazzers, Oasis fans and absolutely anyone who remembers Madchester.

Jon Brookes, you're a bloomin' success. How does it feel?

"The wine's in the cooler," he replies, with an expansive, Lord Of The Manor gesture. "The cheese is on the board..."
The culinary delights included in the band's rider are indeed tasty-looking. But, joking apart, it's been a tough ride for The Charlatans, and there's no suggestion that anybody's going to be resting on their laurels.

"It's all about work," says Jon. "And we've had to work hard to get here. But I love the guys I play with, they mean a lot to me. And that's the important thing - just us five, making music."

A year after the untimely death of Rob Collins, The Charlatans have a new full-time member in Tony Rogers.

"He's a brilliant Hammond player," Jon enthuses. "He's the same age as Rob, and he only lived three miles from where Rob was born. This band is based on bizarre coincidences."

The death of such a crucial member as Rob Collins could easily have spelt the end for a lesser band than the one that The Charlatans have become. When the news broke last year that the Hammond-hammerer had been involved in a fatal accident near the band's studios in Monmouth, the music industry and music fans alike were devastated. A few short days later The Charlatans supported Oasis at Knebworth, playing to one of the biggest audiences ever seen in the UK with Primal Scream's Martin Duffy offering able support on keyboards. Today, Jon remains tinged with sadness over the death of his friend.

"He was a close friend of mine, Rob," he says. "It affected me very personally. We used to live close by, so inevitably we saw a lot of each other both socially and work-wise. It was a real wrench when he went. He was my partner and a good mate. But I've got over it in as much as I've got something to work towards.

Happily, Jon confirms that Tony possesses "the fundamental Rob-like qualities" required to fill the position. There was never any possibility of the band continuing without their trademark Hammond sound.

"Nah, it's our sound," Jon protests. "We like the Wurlitzer, we like the Hammond and we like piano players. Martin Duffy's a great piano player, and it just adds so much. There's too many two-bit guitar bands around. They've all got loads of attitude but no real style. And they've all listened to the same John Squire and Pete Townshend records…"

Where The Charlatans differ from these hordes of interchangeable guitar bands is in their scorchingly inimitable interplay of rhythm section and organ.

"That's our sound," argues Jon, "And if we go messing with our fundamental principles, I think we're going to come unstuck."

With the maturity of their current album, Tellin' Stories, it appears that The Charlatans' songwriting has come full circle. Nursing a major-league Bob Dylan obsession, Tim Burgess has been writing folk-influenced material with Mark Collins. Jon, meanwhile, works closely with Martin. On each album there will be two or three tracks built upon their funk-psychedelia bass/drums workouts.

"You put it into the rhythm machine," he explains, 'Then the organ and drums get hold of it and it turns into whatever it turns into. I think riffs are really important, too. We'll just play, get a couple of ambient mics, and I'll play with brushes and then Martin'll put a bit of guitar on,"

Often the pair will fill up a 30 minute tape with ideas and then pick and choose the best bits for inclusion on future Charlatans releases. Jon will proudly tell you that the rhythm from 'One To Another' originated in the rehearsal room, recorded on a 90- pence cassette. All of which adds up to a wealth of top-notch material. Not for nothing are The Charlatans known as one of the best singles bands of the decade. Look at the evidence: 'The Only One I Know', 'Weirdo', 'Can't Get Out Of Bed', 'lust Lookin', 'One To Another'... fantastic records, the lot of them. And while they've taken on board the changes in technology that have popped up in recent years, the band still sound resolutely like themselves. Certainly, it's hard to imagine The Charlatans sitting around saying, 'We must make the next record sound like Oasis'. On the other hand, there have been a few bands who sound just a tad like The Charlatans...

"You can only be flattered, can't you?" Jon smiles. "But there can only be one Charlatans, I'll tell you that."

Jon Brookes is characteristically forthcoming in terms of players he himself admires.

"I'm a big Stone Roses fan," he gushes with genuine enthusiasm. "I think Reni and John Bonham are the two greatest drummers that England's ever produced. They're both absolutely amazing, both unique."

Although he knows Reni to say hello to, Jon has no idea what the former Stone Roses drummer has been doing since he was last seen over two years ago.

"But if he ever reads Rhythm, he's one hell of an amazing bloke..."

"I've been listening to a lot of John Bonham's stuff recently. He had some sort of weird funk. That's where it's at. All the engineers I've worked with have got their own theory about how he got that sound. 'Cos he had it in him, it was in his bones. It was his balance, the way he sat at his drums was something else. He came from the West Midlands, he had big shoulders and he played his drums like he was digging the garden."

Interestingly enough, Jon bumped into former Led Zep singer Robert Plant last year in, of all places, Pizza Hut in Walsall.
"He was a very nice man," he remembers warmly. He said, 'I bought your last LP'."

While on the subject of hanging out with great musicians, Jon tells an hilarious anecdote about his bizarre encounter with US session ace Matt Chamberlain a few years back.

"I went to New York for a week and I thought, I'd like to do something while I'm here. American drummers are amazing, I'd like to spend some time with a really brilliant drummer."

As a fan of the first Edie Brickell And The New Bohemians album, Jon was interested to meet New Bohemians drummer Matt Chamberlain, and a mutual acquaintance set up a rendezvous.

"So I went to the Catskill Mountains where he lived," Jon recalls, and he had his big DW drums setup, and a parachute over the top of it. He had his sandals on and his shorts and his hair."

Chamberlain proceeded to play. Jon wasn't disappointed.

"He was great. Really loose and totally American, bendy as fuck."

After demonstrating a couple of rhythms to the Englishman, the pair commenced to jam, Then Chamberlain suggested they go for a walk. "And we basically went berry picking for the rest of the afternoon. He said, 'I have to eat some berries'. He's totally off his head. We went to this little valley and there was this great big log there. He started whacking it with sticks and trying to tell me 'about the reverb'. That's Americans for you..."

Ah, America. The Charlatans don't do badly there, although they're currently more excited about their fanbases in Japan and Australia.

"Everybody wants to break America," Jon cautions, "But I think a band like The Chemicals will actually do it. And The Prodigy won't be far behind".

Despite notable Charlatans collaborations with the techno-friendly likes of Flood, Steve Hillage and Tom Chemical Brother, Jon has elected, for now, to focus on his primary talent.

"I've decided that I'm going to concentrate on just drums and drumming," he states resolutely. "And that's it. I'm going to get as much out of it as I can. I'm really lucky to have a bit of talent - not much, but enough to play in a decent band. I think I'm the luckiest man alive."

JON'S KIT

CYMBALS:
A: 14" Sabian Fusion Hi-Hats
B: 18" Zildjian Medium Thin Crash
C: 21" Sabian Dry Ride
D: 19" Zildjian Medium Crash
E: 22" Zildjian Crash/Ride

DRUMS. Gretsch (Rosewood finish)

22" Bass Drum
13" Mounted Tom
14" Walnut Floor Tom
16" Floor Tom

JON ON HIS KIT:

"I'm a complete Gretsch nut. It's just the sound for me, basically. Cosmetics don't interest me at all. The cymbals play a big part - I do tend to overplay but a lot of our stuff starts off with jams, so the rhythm's always there from the start."