Trying to Interview RiK
‘Get down, idiot sticks.’
Rik is looking up into the tree. His drummer’s feet are hanging at eye level, the upper part of his body furiously rummaging in the leaves.
‘The dumb caveman is crazy about his drumsticks.’ explains Rik. ‘That’s what he’s doing up there. Looking for the best wood.’
The drummer’s porky head pops out between some branches, and he jumps down, holding a pair of long twigs. Rik looks away impatiently, and we all start walking back to the recording studio. . ‘It’s just a couple of sticks.’ Rik tuts. The drummer doesn’t seem to hear him, and waddles off infront of us.
‘We call him Nut,’ says Rik, ‘’cos he’s got the brain the size of one’.
Back at the studio Rik sits down on a rickety stool and starts noodling on an electric guitar. He finds a good chord or two. And he ignores me. On the wall there’s a photo of a blond girl. Is that the famous Essex girl? I ask.
‘Might be. There have been a lot of girls’.
‘A lot of Essex Girls?’
Rik pauses. ‘Nah. Just one of them.’
It’s obvious he doesn’t want to talk, and he engrosses himself in a new track he's working
on while I struggle to ask him more questions. He effortlessly strings a few more chords together, and looks satisfied with the result. He looks like he’s doing what he was born to do.
I ask if this has always been his dream.
‘What, sitting here whilst you ask me stupid questions? No.’
'That's not what I mean', I say. 'I mean have you always dreamed of having a studio like this, of writing music?'
‘This is what I do. I get up and I do stuff.’ RiK says. ‘Dreaming doesn’t come into it.’
‘So it’s the love of it which gets you out of bed in the morning?’
‘I get out of bed,’ he replies, ‘cos I’m too good not to.’ He scratches a chord and it fuzzes through the amp at me. ‘What gets you out of bed in the morning? Your mum?’
He’s going to be a challenge. I change tack, and ask him where his inspiration comes from.
He looks at me flatly. ‘I’ve heard that one a million times before ‘n all. Where do you get your questions, ‘The Baby Book of Interviews’?’
This time I decide to hold out for an answer, and stare at him, waiting, challenging him to budge. Finally he sniffs and puts down his guitar. ‘Well, it’s fair enough to assume that I’ve met an Essex girl along the way, innit? And lucky escapes from another few. There’s been enough going on. Plenty of material to write about.’
Again, I wait for him to elaborate. Maybe this tactic works on him.
‘You want more?’ he says finally. ‘You’ll read it in the papers soon enough.’
To be continued
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