John is no stranger to the Iguana, one of his other bands, P.A.I.N., played more gigs for us than any other band, five, and so far have been the only band we have interviewed twice. But we are not here to talk about P.A.I.N. We want the juice on this phoenix rising. John has been a Londoner for over a decade, but back in the beginning, he was a Makem. “Pretty much all of the band were from Sunderland, we were a gang of mates that hung out together getting up to no good and having a laugh. That was what the band was all about, we were a gang.”

The band played gigs and festies across this green and pleasant land, released two albums and three singles, then bang, gone. “As I have said before, I think a good life time for a project is 5 years, AOS3 had done its five years. Over the years the line up changed and the band changed and with the advent of the Criminal justice Act the gig landscape changed. We did a tour promoting a magazine and every gig was a loser. We finished off at a gig in Liverpool and there were two people there that actually cared about us being there and another three lads that were just out and happened to end up at the gig. It also tied in with Colin leaving the band, he was one of the core members and I had to ask myself should I continue without him, and the answer was no. So that was it, I was off on that bus to London and five days later P.A.I.N. did their first gig. The rest is history.” (That’s enough of PAIN, we will be uploading our interviews with them shortly)

Bass player Andy had gone on to play with Tarantism, and still does. Colin went on to play with JESSE (with Frankie Stubbs from Leatherface). After six years with PAIN, john left the band, then after some short lived projects L.D.D. LESS and The Broken Heart Orchestra with Dicky Hammond (also Leatherface) and 3 Bavarian guys, John quit the music scene. “Not long after I left PAIN, LESS fell off the radar and I was becoming disillusioned with it all, it wasn’t fun. The final nail in the coffin was getting sacked from this band with the Germans in. I was devastated; I had never been sacked before. I was in the house in a Davros costume making a spoof Dr Who movie for my son and I got the call sacking me. I’d had enough, so I gave it all up.”

Since then John has found himself another career, he has been teaching in Lewisham, making animations, and doing lots of skateboarding; doing very nicely thank you. “Its shocking how quickly I disappeared, there was no one nagging me to join bands or do any music”. John’s son Oskar has been doing a bit of nagging lately though, which ties in with john’s theory as to why the likes of RDF, back to the Planet, Omnia Opera and the Tofu Love Frogs all seem to be getting back together at once. “For a lot of us we are at that stage now when our kids are grown up and we are starting to have time to do these things again. I also think there has been a political silence from the music scene, the scene needs a good injection of politics.”

John had started gigging lately in a three piece called Myspace You Tube, with Kev, Headjam’s drummer. Then John tried to set up an Aos3 Myspace and found that Andy had already set one up so they got talking. “A lot of people went through the band in those five years, we got in touch with most of the core members to make sure no noses were put out of joint and I think we have avoided that happening. The core members were myself, Colin on guitar, Andy on Bass and Erl on drums. We spoke to Erl but he is living in Canada now. He got in touch to say he was drumming the same time as our first gig, so there was some sort of psychic connection there, which was cool.”

The rest has done John the world of good, chatting to him he sounds really happy and contented with his lot. “After five years rest I am starting to enjoy music again now, I am hungry for it. But I don’t want to make a career of it, I have been there and done that, there lies heartache and broken dreams. I am teaching Oskar at home this term, I am teaching in Lewisham and the class I have is like working with my own production company. Music is not going to take over that.”

John may have settled down to his own rhythm these days but he is not quite an ‘Armchair Anarchist’ yet. “Well I am not too heavily involved in the movement these days, but if someone offered us a Reclaim the Streets type gig I would be up for it. I don’t think we will be as full on as PAIN were in their heyday. I want it to be fun though; I don’t want to be playing benefits in squats full of smack heads taking the piss, who cannot even tell you what the gig is a benefit for”.

“From what I can tell from the old faces that are still on the scene, the younger generation have picked up the political baton and are running with it, but I wouldn’t want to watch john Lennon singing protest songs for thirty years, so I am not sure how much in demand we would be. It would be cool if we could pick up a new audience of kids that were too young to have known us when we split, but I am not sure we will be doing enough gigs to achieve that really.”

With the band spread between London, Sunderland and Northampton, they don’t get a lot of time together. “We have done two extended rehearsals, lasting in a couple of days each, and the gig. We need to polish up and rehearse a lot of the old songs before we record any more”. This became clear at their first gig in Birmingham, when they exhausted their set after an hour and had to do some of the set over again to keep the masses from rebelling. One surprise in the set was The Jam’s ‘Down In The Tube Station at midnight’. “We had done it as the three piece in London and it worked quite well, maybe because it was written for a three piece band, but we don’t think it went too well with the five piece, so I am not sure we will be doing it again”.

Once again, as they did all those years ago, Citizen fish are giving AOS3 a bunk up, and the two will be doing a few dates together. “Me and Dick (Fish Singer) go way back. We went to see him recently, my partner was doing a play near by so we popped in for a visit and he came to the play with us. He is well into paining now, the house is just creaking with art that he and his partner have done”.

John is into all sorts of different forms of art, he is a musician obviously, an animator and a songwriter. Most of the band are well read and they claim to have probably plagiarised the works of Robert Anton Wilson more heavily than any other band, ever! (Except possibly FUNZIG!). The band name itself comes from Augustus Owsley Stanley the third, the infamous LSD dealer that hung around with the Grateful Dead and the Merry Pranksters in the 60’s. “Colin can be quite mystical, and Andy is certainly interested in all sorts of things. I have not known Sam very long but he is an interesting character, but Kev claims to have never read a book in his life. Because of that he claims he can escape our psychobabble, he has his own ways of reaching a different plane; he never fails to impress me”. We can vouch for that, after having to transport the remains of one of the Iguana tribe that had tried to keep up with Kev. “I like to think I have a ‘wide reality’, as Robert Anton Wilson put it, I let in a lot of different ideas, but I don’t think my life is dominated by any one particular train of thought”.

With there being such a strong connection between the band and LSD, is there any chance we could see some psychedelic remixes of the old stuff? “We were never 100% happy with the way those first albums came out, so we may well look into some re-mixing of them which may bring out a more psychedelic edge, but we certainly are not going to go down the trance remix route. I personally wish the whole dance music thing never happened. Thirteen years on we are all better musicians now, so we will hopefully be able to get the sound we want first time round now”.

Yes, a third album is in the pipeline. “We are in no rush but I have a few ideas. I am used to dealing with bigger projects now so we aim to do an album and an album length animation film to go along with it. Music and animation are such natural bedfellows, I am really looking forward to it.” So are we John, so are we.

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