Antony Genn and and Martin Slattery - aka The Hours - have one of the best backstories in music and their address books read like a who's who of 1990s popular culture. Genn tells Jim Carrollabout the road to recovery and rediscovery
YOU may think that all the best rock'n'roll tales have already been told, but that's before Antony Genn and and Martin Slattery begin to tell their story. It has everything you could want from a musical biopic: addiction, salvation and streaking in front of 100,000 people.
Genn and Slattery are The Hours, the band behind one of the year's most compelling releases. Narcissus Road is uplifting, majestic and epic. It's big, angry, fired-up music made in small rooms, but with stadiums in mind. Every soul-bearing tune on the album, from the roll-calls of the greats who came back from the brink on Ali in the Jungle to the searing, soulful poke of Back When You Were Good, focus on perseverance against the odds or the importance of maintaining grace under pressure.
The same themes dominate The Hours' backstory. The two thirtysomethings have had their walks on the wild sides (or a marathon in Genn's case) and these experiences have moulded every song on the album.
Along the way, like a demented Brit-rock pic directed by Martin Scorsese, there have been cameos from Robbie Williams, Shaun Ryder, Damien Hirst, Joe Strummer, Pulp and Elastica. You could play Six Degrees of The Hours for ages.
The pair first met in 1995 when Williams, then fresh out of Take That, met Ryder, then making noisy funk as Black Grape. Sheffield lad Genn was sharing a flat with Williams at the time, so he tagged along, while the Mancunian Slattery was playing keyboards with the Grape. The pair hit it off immediately but it wasn't until later that they began to make music together.
Of course, admits Genn, there were other matters to deal with first. Years of addiction and substance abuse had taken their toll. "At that stage, I think I was holding onto life by a strand," he remembers.
Genn's his first musical shapes were thrown as a 16-year-old guitarist with Pulp; his first dabblings with drugs began before then. "It all started when I took acid when I was 14. I suppose I was trying to get out of the world I was actually in and experience something different to my own reality. I went through all the drugs until I got to the big two and was basically a hardcore addict for a very long time. I found that if you go that high, you've also got to go that low."
Genn moved to London to clean up his act and found himself staying with Williams. "I was bumming around on different people's floors, like you do, and Robbie just said I could stay at his. We hung out at his for a summer and had a laugh."
That eventful summer saw Genn make an infamous appearance alongside Elastica at the Glastonbury Festival. Artist Damien Hirst recalls meeting Genn walking around the site "dressed as George Best holding a ball and a bottle of vodka," but most Glastonbury revellers will recall him standing naked onstage waving his hands around while Elastica were playing. (The video is now on YouTube.) It didn't harm Genn's future employment prospects with Elastica: he later turned up as their keyboard player for a spell.
If that wasn't enough for one festival, Genn also had a fateful encounter with Joe Strummer that weekend. "I think I bugged him about getting back up onstage and doing what he was good at," Genn recalls. A few years later, a cleaned-up Genn ended up producing The Clash icon's solo record and hooking up with Slattery in Strummer's new band, The Mescaleros. After Strummer's death in 2002 ("that was absolutely devastating for all of us to deal with"), the pair decided to write songs together.
It took a while for them to find their feet, but he reckons that Narcissus Road will stand tall as their manifesto for some time to come. "It's about our musical influences. It's about events and things that have happened in our lives. It's about love and death and drug addiction and being told that you can't do things, and then kicking against that and rebelling."
It sounds as if the pair have learned much from their workmates down through the years. "The reason why all these people are great is because they do what they want. They don't worry about anyone else. We realised that if we wanted to feel satisfied with our life as musicians, we'd have to stand up and do our own thing. That's why The Hours are so brazenly honest."
Their early studio recordings were funded by longtime pal Damien Hirst. "When they started to sound good, I said I'd put them in the studio, pay for their first album and take them up to their first record deal," says Hirst. "I didn't want to get involved like Warhol did with the Velvet Underground. It was more about friendship, just helping my mates out."
For The Hours, the future is about making headlines with their music, rather than drug tales or famous friends. Genn says it's about communication. "Both of us have been in groups with the three of the greatest frontmen of all, and I hope some of that has rubbed off on us. We really think we have something to say and hope that people want to hear that."
The Hours family tree:
Jarvis Cocker - The 16-year-old Antony Genn played guitar with an early incarnation of Cocker's Pulp.
Shaun Ryder- Martin Slattery played keyboards with Ryder's post-Happy Mondays group Black Grape.
Robbie Williams- Genn crashed in his flat when he first moved to London and subsequently remixed Williams's cover of George Michael's Freedom. while Slattery played on the ex-Take Thatter's debut album, Life Thru a Lens.
Joe Strummer- Genn produced Strummer's Rock Art and the X-Ray Style album and toured with The Mescaleros. Slattery was a member fromof The Mescaleros and co-produced the posthumous Streetcore album.
Damien Hirst - The British artist is a longtime friend of both Genn and Slattery. He footed the initial recording studio bills for The Hours and designed the cover for Narcissus Roadalbum.
Elastica- Genn appeared unannounced on a stage with them at the Glastonbury Festival in 1995 and later toured as their keyboard player
Grace Jones- Genn has co-written and produced tracks for Jones.
UNKLEGenn produced the James Lavelle-led Mo Wax collective's Never, Never Land album.
John Malkovich- Genn provided the music for Cancer Chronicles, 13 poems by Damien Hirst read by the actor.
Narcissus Roadis out now on A&M Records
