The Lickerish Quartet
Three former Jellyfish men return with a new band and album, a sting being that there's no Andy Sturmer.
It’s been more than two decades since Jellyfish crashed and burned in a fireball of Day-Glo pop and recrimination. Two studio albums, some dazzling live shows and they were gone, exiting stage left in loon pants and hats that Dr Seuss might have dreamed up.
Happily, three former members – Roger Joseph Manning Jr., Tim Smith and Eric Dover – have reunited as The Lickerish Quartet, and with their Threesome Vol.1 EP have recreated the psychedelic pop and bang – sublime and heady, like early Queen and Bowie jamming in your garage – that made Jellyfish so vital.
Classic Rock caught up with Tim Smith.
The band are named after a soft-porn classic. Care to clear that up? Ha! That’s one of Roger’s favourite movies. I wasn’t familiar with it. When I was in Jellyfish, me and Roger used to watch the movie Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls a lot, just for the kitsch factor, so I could see how it could be the same genre.
The three of you finally reunited in 2017. What was the impetus? We always kept in touch. I was with Noel Gallagher, Roger with Beck, and we’d run in to each other at festivals. Then after I’d finished playing with Noel, Roger just said what would you think of trying to write together? It wasn’t really anything more than that. You can probably tell the material’s a little bit meticulous, so it’s not something you can just knock out spontaneously. It took a bit of time.
When I listen to it, I hear Sparks, Queen, ELO… Those are records that are built into our DNA, and I think the three of us have the same definition of what those things mean. Things like the subtle differences in trying to explain to somebody what the keyboard sounds of Roxy Music was like on the early records, as opposed to the [later Roxy] Avalon period, stuff that we geeked our way through.
Not surprisingly, there’s clearly some Jellyfish in there too. We all clearly like a certain kind of music that refers to the things that Jellyfish were about, but we’re not trying to be Jellyfish. And, obviously, Andy Sturmer not being a part of it, as lead singer of Jellyfish, is a pretty big thing to not have [laughs], but that’s fine.
Roger and Andy’s relationship was famously fractious. Did you ask Andy to be part of it? No. He was made aware of it, but I have not spoken to him in I don’t know how many years. I know that he’s very busy in his world of doing music for cartoons and movies, and that’s where he’s happiest, I believe.
The lead-off single, Lighthouse Spaceship, comes in at a radio-friendly six minutes-plus. When I first heard Roger play that for me, it reminded me of Bowie doing some country rock, then it went somewhere else. When I first heard it after it had been mastered, I struggled with it because there was so much dense information there. When I look at what’s on normal pop radio, it’s such a different, strippeddown version of things. It’s become a lost art what Roger does with vocal arrangements. It takes time for us, and it will take time for people to get it, but the payoff is extraordinary.
“You can probably tell the material’s a little bit meticulous.”
Threesome Vol. 1 EP is released on May 15 via The Lickerish Quartet/Label Logic.