‘A lot of bands in the late ’70s were wearing grey. But we’re determined to have fun: The hugely influential Swell Maps return after 46 years | Punk

SWell Maps was a punk band, but only because that word meant something different when they started making records in 1977. It didn’t mean bands called Knuckleheadz or Gimp Fist; It meant absolute freedom and curiosity, not anger. Their music wandered off in unexpected directions, with songs barely sticking together before falling apart, interspersed with strange sounds coming from everything happening around them. It was psychedelic and it was prog and it was krautrock, every bit as much as it was punk. Most of all, it was DIY.

So the descendants of Swell Maps were not the type to get sleeve tattoos and wear leather. They were, like Swell Maps, obsessed. Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore described them as “part of my upbringing”. Stephen Malkmus has suggested that Pavement was formed, more or less, as a tribute to Swell Maps and its kindred spirits, Desperate Bikers. Now add in all the bands that tried or are still trying to sound like Pavement or Sonic Youth, bands that have probably never heard of Swell Maps. This is how you determine the scope of their influence.

“We took what we were doing seriously, but we were determined to have some fun while doing it,” says 69-year-old Joey Head, who has assembled a group of sympathetic musicians called the Swell Maps for a new album called Swell Maps C21, their first newly recorded material since the 1980s. “We had a saying: ‘Serious fun’. A lot of the bands at that time – some of the bands involved in the raw commercial scene – were very stubborn and grouchy all the time, and dressed in grey. We weren’t like that.”

Hence it is called Joy Head. His real name is Stephen Byrd, but all of the Swell Maps took pseudonyms with the explosion of punk, although they were inspired not by the Damned but by the not-so-hippie band Gong. Brothers Adrian and Kevin Godfrey became, respectively, Nikki Sudden and Epic Soundtracks. They and Head were the established trio, but three other members wrote, recorded or played live: Phones Sportsman (David Barrington), Biggles Books (Richard Scaldwell) and Golden Cockrill (John Cockrill). And if Nikki Sudden is rock’n’roll’s most notorious pseudonym, thank goodness Head and Soundtracks didn’t adopt his suggestions for theirs: Bondage Pelican and Cleavage Frogdog.

“I was at school with Adrian,” Head says. “We’re in the early 70s, early teens. We’d meet up and do a bit of traveling together – by bike down to the south coast of the Midlands.” They went to concerts together to see Mott the Hoople, Led Zeppelin, and more. But while Adrian was into T. Rex and The Stones, Head was into rock music, a taste he shared with Kevin. Joined by others, the three began making music in each other’s bedrooms. Faust Tapes – the budget-priced acoustic album by German band Faust – showed them that it was possible to hit record and play, even if they were just teenagers in Solihull. Then punk arrived: “It was a catalyst for people with new ideas, because the hippie scene was fading away,” Head says.

Encouraged by Buzzcocks’ release of Spiral Scratch, Swell Maps rented a studio and recorded their 1977 debut single Read About Seymour. “Adrian, or Nicky as he called himself, came out with this song, and it sounded like ska or reggae, and he said it was about the king of mod in the early 60s.” They are now also finally able to play gigs. “We weren’t ready before ’77,” Head continues. “And it wasn’t until punk that some places became more accessible – you didn’t have to send them a demo tape or do cover versions. We could sneak into a punk night, even though we didn’t sound like punks or sound like punks. We were trying to do something a little different to the Sex Pistols or the Damned or the Clash.”

Things looked bright: John Peel championed Swell Maps from the start on the BBC, and Rough Trade picked up their debut album A Trip to Marineville for release in 1979. Then he suddenly went to London, expecting his bandmates to join him there and go full-time. Instead, Head and Soundtracks went to art college – the former in Manchester, the latter in Portsmouth – and the band went on hiatus after a disastrous Italian tour in the spring of 1980.

Before that, Head was severely beaten by some skinheads who sprayed him with a water pistol. He needed surgery and a period of recovery, and although the band canceled their concerts, the Italian tour came very early. “It was a terrifying accident, and I was sick for a long time, longer than I like to admit,” Head says. “I felt guilty that I had done something stupid that bounced back on the band, and I was in denial about my condition. In those days there was no term for PTSD, but I was very shaken, to put it mildly. I had a scar too, which wasn’t healing, and I kept opening up on that tour. That was a problem. We probably could have had a break from it for a few months, but no, we decided to break up in a big way.”

Instead of joining the big punk and post-punk acts, Swell Maps found kin with the likes of Alternative TV Shows, the Pop Group, PragVEC, and Scritti Politti, with whom they toured the Low Countries in a van. In particular, they find a bond with Television Personalities (TVPs) and their leader and constant, Dan Tracy. This core group of people associated with the two bands – Sudden, Soundtracks, Head, Tracey, and co-founder TVPs Ed Ball and Joe Foster – would remain the backbone of Creation Records through the 1980s, and unintended father figures to a whole host of buzzy indie bands.

Head himself spent a decade with the TVPs after Swell Maps broke up, joining just in time for one of pop music’s most glaring errors of judgment, when in 1984 they were invited – as fans of Pink Floyd co-founder Syd Barrett – to open for Floyd guitarist David Gilmour’s UK solo tour. On opening night, Tracy introduced the song “I Know Where Syd Barrett Lives” by asserting that yes, he did. Then he read the speech on stage. “Dan got a little carried away,” Head says. “We were in a mischievous mood that night, and Dan was the most annoying of all. We were trying to be a bit sarcastic. I think we did an extended version of [Pink Floyd’s] Interstellar Overdrive and I had some scraps, and I was throwing them in the air. They made me come back and sweep the stage after that, and then we were taken off the tour.

The new Swell Maps lineup includes members who have played on recent releases of the TVPs, including guitarist Lee McFadden. “TV characters and Swell Maps were the same thing,” McFadden says. “TVPs used to have people coming up to us after a gig and saying: ‘Why didn’t you sound like the recording?’ And that’s because we never could. For both bands, spirit and imagination will always be more important than execution.

Epic Soundtracks died in 1997, followed by the death of Nikki Sudden in 2006, leaving Head as the band’s archivist. He sifted through old tapes to release compilations and persuaded Mute to release an album of the band’s Peel sessions, and in 2022 released a book about the band. To celebrate, he convinced a group of like-minded musicians to join him in celebrating the music of Swell Maps, and from there this new record grew.

It is divided between old, rediscovered or unfinished songs and new songs. Phones Sportsman and Golden Cockrill contributed, as did another famous musician inspired by Swell Maps, Luke Haines. Now the band has swelled in size, and Head says: “I’m determined that we’re still pushing the boundaries of what we can do.” He reflects on the band’s nonexistent chart success and brightly announces: “Here are the hits!”