Gizz Butt has been active on the alternative scene as a lead guitarist now for 30 years, with a healthy roster of appearances to date with acts such as the cult punk band The English Dogs (84-95), the Prodigy (96-99), and most recently, Crass (07). It has been said that he is one of the people responsible for creating thrash metal. At present Gizz is in his element with his band The More I See. Born in 2003, they now have two great albums under their belt. Their thrash metal reeks of tight riffs and molesting vocals, coupled with a drummer who has drummed for The Damned, Morrissey and Conflict. On June 2nd the bands sophomore album, The Unholy Feast, was released and is by far the pinnacle of Gizzs career. To me Gizz is one of the greatest musicians I have ever encountered, full of energy, mischief and an amazing ability to play the guitar like few others.
Kate Townsend: Hi Gizz, hows it goin?
Gizz Butt: Not too bad.
KT: The day you picked up a guitar was it obvious to you that you were going to be good? Or were you just an optimist?
GB: The first guitar I picked up was my brothers, it was a dreadful acoustic but I just didnt even think about that at the time, I dont know why I picked it up, I just think it was music. At that time [1976] in Manchester, everyone around was just into music, I wasnt thinking about being good, I wasnt thinking about that, it was just about having something. Cause I was no good physically, I was very thin, I was no good at sports, I just needed something.
KT: Tell me about your first band The System?
GB: The system started in 1979, it was a school band, it was pretty good, mainly because we were at school and we took advantage of the facilities. Every break time, every dinnertime we went and had a play. We got pretty proficient at our instruments. We took that up to the age of about 14 and we were out playing in pubs. There was a lot of people aged 24+ coming watching this band maybe 10-30 years younger than them and thinking, Bloody hell these little kids, theyve got something. The system stopped in 1981 when I joined The Destructors.
KT: Did you not feel very intimidated when you first started playing live with The Destructors being only 14? And how did you manage to get into the venues?
GB: I didnt even worry about that, I hung around with people that were older than me anyway when I was 14, more often than not they were organizing the shows, not always though, I started organizing shows when I was 13, I put them on in community centres. I was getting a lot of hot tips off them.
KT: Who were your main influences back then?
GB: On the metal front it was Iron Maiden, Eddie Van Halen and Motorhead. On the punk front it would be the ruts, the Pistols and the Damned. Then I heard Black Flag and Bad Brains for the first time and I thought like shit! This is fucking awesome, I really loved what the Americans were doing and that was before the Metallica thing came along.
KT: How did the whole Destructors to English Dogs switch happen?
GB: Wakey, the singer, left the English Dogs. The remaining members of the band then started to get into the metal side of things, they needed to get a guitar player that could solo. They knocked on my door and I played them all the stuff I was writing at the time, they loved it and said come over and have a play with us. I wrote the To the Ends of the Earth 12-inch; it was really a landmark to punk metal.
KT: How did you get chosen to play in the Prodigy?
GB: Its all down really to this guy Morat, he used to be a kinda punk rock guy when we used to do gigs in the Destructors. Ive known him since 1981when the Destructors used to play at the 100 Club. Youd get someone who stands out from the crowd a little bit, like a face, that kind of thing, hes now a journalist for Kerrang. He was a big English Dogs fan, he kind of championed the English Dogs and was getting us great reviews and putting us in Kerrang. One day he just phoned me up and said I know a really big band that want a guitarist, would you be interested in it? So one thing led to another and I ended up getting a phone call from Keith Flint, it was like that.
KT: Ive seen some pre-Gizz videos of Firestarter where Keith still has a pony tail do you think it was because of you joining the Prodigy that they punked things up a bit?
GB: It went more punky when I joined. He kinda had that Cat Woman image before. Even in the Firestarter video, its on there. Theres some early stuff like when they did that Poison video, he is starting to get towards that, the whole band are in fact. That video is really dark for dance music. When they saw me at the audition they liked that, he wanted more of that and it kinda made the Prodigy more genuine, they appreciated it.
KT: How did it feel to go from playing in front of 300 people to over 100,000 people?
GB: Its a big feeling and its really exciting, its insane enough when you first do it, its obviously like an enormous adrenalin rush, you dont ever want it to end and when you do it regularly, wow. The first six months of the Prodigy was so insanely exciting, I cant describe it. It was just a whirlwind and I have to appreciate what happened, a rare and unusual thing.
KT: Ive been watching some Prodigy videos and you seem completely at home on stage, to the point I believe you out staged Keith. Do you think this worried any of the members, or were they all at peace with having you and your influence in the band?
GB: [Laughs] I think that led to me getting fired. As I said, the first six months of being in the band it was really good and I really felt at home with the guys, but then after that I feel that because of what you just said, that lead to me on stage getting more control. Then I was having people say to me stick in this little space. I even had a little platform that I was told to stay on. I do think it just got to the point with Liam saying to me something like, You are stealing Keiths thunder. That is basically what he was trying to say, to be fair, Keith was the star. Its just one of those things, you know like when you have a great chemistry that can never, never last.
KT: Your current band The More I See have just released its second album The Unholy Feast. Are you happy with the overall outcome of the album?
GB: The album is awesome, Im really happy with it. The album is fucking mega; Ill defiantly be able to listen to this album all my life, no problem. You cant really ask for more than that when you make a record. Wardance was kinda the blueprint to The More I See, back in 1987, when that finished we crazily formed a band called Sundance which was totally experimental rock, it was hopeless, it was really crap, but this album is a corker.
KT: Last year I went to see the Crass do Feeding Of The Five Thousand in London and to my surprise there you are playing alongside Steve Ignorant. Was that a big deal to you?
GB: Yeah, of course. It would be a similar thing if I was asked for whatever reason to play alongside James Hetfield or Paul McCartney something like that, it would be a very similar experience. Basically Crass meant a lot to me when I was 12. At that age like every other teenager I was rebellious and thats when I started wanting to know about alternatives. I wanted to know what was going on in the world and with politics, I wanted to know about modern history and the things that have shaped my life, I wanted to know why they shaped my life. Crass was one of the bands that were pretty much giving me information and they were telling people about what had happened and what was going on. Alright, its their view of it, but often the songs were plain facts. I probably wouldnt have known about Hiroshima for many more years if it werent for Crass. They were putting things in such a way that it made you read it, stand up and actually start to question authority for yourself, in a much more serious way than what the Sex Pistols did. The Sex Pistols were awesome and I really think that they really started the whole thing, their issues towards punk, but Crass they had something really dark and meaning, they were saying things you really didnt want to know. The song Bloody Revolutions was my song. To me that song had everything in it; it had the intensity of early punk, and would you believe it, it had slight Beatleesque overtones to it. There was also a metallic sound that Crass had. They werent the greatest of guitarists, but they certainly had a crunch and a machine gun attack on the guitars.
KT: I always think of it being very military sounding.
GB: Which of course, later on, Metallica when they started doing their rhythms, they went to town on those kind of military sort of precise guitars chugging. When I listen to those lyrics, especially on that song [Bloody Revolutions], fuckin ell, to be alongside him in the rehearsals! There was one rehearsal where the lady taking the role of Eve Libertine didnt come to the rehearsal so when we did bloody revolutions I asked Steve is it all right if I sing that middle bit, so there I was screaming at the top of my voice and what a great feeling that was, that was really brilliant and Steve was laughing his head off cause it was so high pitched, very hilarious.
KT: Before you go can you give us a story of one of your antics without getting yourself into too much trouble?
GB: Ive done lots of turd terrorism that has to be one of the nastiest things that I have done in the past, generally it involves shit. I seem to remember when I was in the English Dogs with Wakey we were constantly doing turd terrorist games, the very worse one I did was with The Destructors, we went to a gig in Norwich and I was absolutely dieing for a crap and I went to the toilet and did a dump and purposely did it so it sat on the back of the toilet seat, it came up like a fucking huge volcano. Then I took the light bulb out of the toilet, next I saw the lead singers girlfriend going in for a piss, when she came out her face was just totally white, the funniest thing was at the end of the night that turd made its way all around the venue, at one point I went into the support bands dressing room and it was in their sink, the same turd, and by the very end of the night it wound up in my guitar case and there it was sat next to me guitar. Turd Terrorism!
Check out Kate Townsends SG member profile: Tate. For more information on Gizz go to www.gizzbutt.com and www.themoreisee.com.
Kate Townsend: Hi Gizz, hows it goin?
Gizz Butt: Not too bad.
KT: The day you picked up a guitar was it obvious to you that you were going to be good? Or were you just an optimist?
GB: The first guitar I picked up was my brothers, it was a dreadful acoustic but I just didnt even think about that at the time, I dont know why I picked it up, I just think it was music. At that time [1976] in Manchester, everyone around was just into music, I wasnt thinking about being good, I wasnt thinking about that, it was just about having something. Cause I was no good physically, I was very thin, I was no good at sports, I just needed something.
KT: Tell me about your first band The System?
GB: The system started in 1979, it was a school band, it was pretty good, mainly because we were at school and we took advantage of the facilities. Every break time, every dinnertime we went and had a play. We got pretty proficient at our instruments. We took that up to the age of about 14 and we were out playing in pubs. There was a lot of people aged 24+ coming watching this band maybe 10-30 years younger than them and thinking, Bloody hell these little kids, theyve got something. The system stopped in 1981 when I joined The Destructors.
KT: Did you not feel very intimidated when you first started playing live with The Destructors being only 14? And how did you manage to get into the venues?
GB: I didnt even worry about that, I hung around with people that were older than me anyway when I was 14, more often than not they were organizing the shows, not always though, I started organizing shows when I was 13, I put them on in community centres. I was getting a lot of hot tips off them.
KT: Who were your main influences back then?
GB: On the metal front it was Iron Maiden, Eddie Van Halen and Motorhead. On the punk front it would be the ruts, the Pistols and the Damned. Then I heard Black Flag and Bad Brains for the first time and I thought like shit! This is fucking awesome, I really loved what the Americans were doing and that was before the Metallica thing came along.
KT: How did the whole Destructors to English Dogs switch happen?
GB: Wakey, the singer, left the English Dogs. The remaining members of the band then started to get into the metal side of things, they needed to get a guitar player that could solo. They knocked on my door and I played them all the stuff I was writing at the time, they loved it and said come over and have a play with us. I wrote the To the Ends of the Earth 12-inch; it was really a landmark to punk metal.
KT: How did you get chosen to play in the Prodigy?
GB: Its all down really to this guy Morat, he used to be a kinda punk rock guy when we used to do gigs in the Destructors. Ive known him since 1981when the Destructors used to play at the 100 Club. Youd get someone who stands out from the crowd a little bit, like a face, that kind of thing, hes now a journalist for Kerrang. He was a big English Dogs fan, he kind of championed the English Dogs and was getting us great reviews and putting us in Kerrang. One day he just phoned me up and said I know a really big band that want a guitarist, would you be interested in it? So one thing led to another and I ended up getting a phone call from Keith Flint, it was like that.
KT: Ive seen some pre-Gizz videos of Firestarter where Keith still has a pony tail do you think it was because of you joining the Prodigy that they punked things up a bit?
GB: It went more punky when I joined. He kinda had that Cat Woman image before. Even in the Firestarter video, its on there. Theres some early stuff like when they did that Poison video, he is starting to get towards that, the whole band are in fact. That video is really dark for dance music. When they saw me at the audition they liked that, he wanted more of that and it kinda made the Prodigy more genuine, they appreciated it.
KT: How did it feel to go from playing in front of 300 people to over 100,000 people?
GB: Its a big feeling and its really exciting, its insane enough when you first do it, its obviously like an enormous adrenalin rush, you dont ever want it to end and when you do it regularly, wow. The first six months of the Prodigy was so insanely exciting, I cant describe it. It was just a whirlwind and I have to appreciate what happened, a rare and unusual thing.
KT: Ive been watching some Prodigy videos and you seem completely at home on stage, to the point I believe you out staged Keith. Do you think this worried any of the members, or were they all at peace with having you and your influence in the band?
GB: [Laughs] I think that led to me getting fired. As I said, the first six months of being in the band it was really good and I really felt at home with the guys, but then after that I feel that because of what you just said, that lead to me on stage getting more control. Then I was having people say to me stick in this little space. I even had a little platform that I was told to stay on. I do think it just got to the point with Liam saying to me something like, You are stealing Keiths thunder. That is basically what he was trying to say, to be fair, Keith was the star. Its just one of those things, you know like when you have a great chemistry that can never, never last.
KT: Your current band The More I See have just released its second album The Unholy Feast. Are you happy with the overall outcome of the album?
GB: The album is awesome, Im really happy with it. The album is fucking mega; Ill defiantly be able to listen to this album all my life, no problem. You cant really ask for more than that when you make a record. Wardance was kinda the blueprint to The More I See, back in 1987, when that finished we crazily formed a band called Sundance which was totally experimental rock, it was hopeless, it was really crap, but this album is a corker.
KT: Last year I went to see the Crass do Feeding Of The Five Thousand in London and to my surprise there you are playing alongside Steve Ignorant. Was that a big deal to you?
GB: Yeah, of course. It would be a similar thing if I was asked for whatever reason to play alongside James Hetfield or Paul McCartney something like that, it would be a very similar experience. Basically Crass meant a lot to me when I was 12. At that age like every other teenager I was rebellious and thats when I started wanting to know about alternatives. I wanted to know what was going on in the world and with politics, I wanted to know about modern history and the things that have shaped my life, I wanted to know why they shaped my life. Crass was one of the bands that were pretty much giving me information and they were telling people about what had happened and what was going on. Alright, its their view of it, but often the songs were plain facts. I probably wouldnt have known about Hiroshima for many more years if it werent for Crass. They were putting things in such a way that it made you read it, stand up and actually start to question authority for yourself, in a much more serious way than what the Sex Pistols did. The Sex Pistols were awesome and I really think that they really started the whole thing, their issues towards punk, but Crass they had something really dark and meaning, they were saying things you really didnt want to know. The song Bloody Revolutions was my song. To me that song had everything in it; it had the intensity of early punk, and would you believe it, it had slight Beatleesque overtones to it. There was also a metallic sound that Crass had. They werent the greatest of guitarists, but they certainly had a crunch and a machine gun attack on the guitars.
KT: I always think of it being very military sounding.
GB: Which of course, later on, Metallica when they started doing their rhythms, they went to town on those kind of military sort of precise guitars chugging. When I listen to those lyrics, especially on that song [Bloody Revolutions], fuckin ell, to be alongside him in the rehearsals! There was one rehearsal where the lady taking the role of Eve Libertine didnt come to the rehearsal so when we did bloody revolutions I asked Steve is it all right if I sing that middle bit, so there I was screaming at the top of my voice and what a great feeling that was, that was really brilliant and Steve was laughing his head off cause it was so high pitched, very hilarious.
KT: Before you go can you give us a story of one of your antics without getting yourself into too much trouble?
GB: Ive done lots of turd terrorism that has to be one of the nastiest things that I have done in the past, generally it involves shit. I seem to remember when I was in the English Dogs with Wakey we were constantly doing turd terrorist games, the very worse one I did was with The Destructors, we went to a gig in Norwich and I was absolutely dieing for a crap and I went to the toilet and did a dump and purposely did it so it sat on the back of the toilet seat, it came up like a fucking huge volcano. Then I took the light bulb out of the toilet, next I saw the lead singers girlfriend going in for a piss, when she came out her face was just totally white, the funniest thing was at the end of the night that turd made its way all around the venue, at one point I went into the support bands dressing room and it was in their sink, the same turd, and by the very end of the night it wound up in my guitar case and there it was sat next to me guitar. Turd Terrorism!
Check out Kate Townsends SG member profile: Tate. For more information on Gizz go to www.gizzbutt.com and www.themoreisee.com.
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
bev_antain:
I'm glad to see this guy is getting some attention, along with the other Prodigy live guitarist Jim Davies he is one of the most underexposed musicians out there despite the talent.
thejuanupsman:
Great interview