Spice Girls biographer David Sinclair on his own band
Wednesday February 9, 2011
From Meatloaf to AC/DC and Lady Gaga, if there has been a music sensation in the past 25 years David Sinclair will probably have reviewed them.
An acclaimed rock critic for The Times and author of a biography on the Spice Girls, the 58-year-old, who lives in Wormholt Road, Shepherds Bush, also plays in his own group.
"I’ve seen an enormous amount of bands over the years and I still love going to gigs," he says. "You could call it an affliction, almost, that most people perhaps get over at some point, but just hasn’t happened to me."
Having seen ‘every great band from Jimi Hendrix onwards’ – with a few notable exceptions – it is little wonder that David has turned his hand to the latent musical talent that has been largely untapped during his life as a critic.
The David Sinclair Trio was formed in 2005 and they are soon to record their third album, DS3, having already released two 10-track albums – Hey (2006) and Threewheeling (2008) – via David’s own Critical Discs label.
Both albums possess a raw edge, which betray his love of punk, having had his most successful stretch as a musician while playing in punk bands in the 1970s.
David cites west Londoners the Sex Pistols and The Clash as two of his biggest influences, saying: "We were very influenced by the whole ‘I’m so bored with the USA’ thing, and writing more about things that were close to you, rather than about being out in the Bayou or somewhere in the Californian desert."
The third album will be a more ‘polished’ affair, for which he hopes that his son, Jack, 20, will play the drums – if he can only track him down. Jack, who is studying sound engineering at Surrey University, played three tracks on Hey and is in demand again following Drew Farmer’s departure from the band after the release of Threewheeling.
Both of David’s children seem to have followed in their father’s footsteps, ‘for better or worse’, with Faith, 21, about to start a career in PR. He adds: "They’re both very into music and I have been taking them to gigs for as long as I remember, so they probably first heard all these bands before they were even born."
The only problem, as he put it, is that ‘both of the industries I work in are probably doomed’.
For the time being, David will continue to spend time following the two passions which have defined him – music and writing – and counts himself very lucky to have been on the front line during some culture-defining moments, not least the astonishing rise of the Spice Girls, of whom he speaks very highly.
"They were a blast to be around, an unbelievable commercial force," he says. "It’s difficult to really remember it now, quite how astonishingly big they were, and how anything attached to them was considered automatically to be a huge money-spinning device."
A far cry from their typecasting as ‘bimbos who couldn’t tie up their own shoelaces’. David reflects on the fact that they had a far bigger hand in their success than people give them credit for.
"I’ve got no regrets about doing it," he said. "I was happy to do it. It was a hoot; far more fun than being stuck in the back of a van with some bunch of indie rock hopefuls."
Few, it seems to me, could claim to be in a more informed position than David to pass judgment on such things.
The David Sinclair Trio will be playing at the King’s Arms in Acton on February 18. See: www.davidsinclairuk.com (opens new window).
Tracks Hey and Threewheeling can be downloaded from iTunes.
