tasteofdecay:Dave Vanian “Drac’s Back!” Jul 1984“Look in the coffin room. He’s always in the coffin

tasteofdecay:Dave Vanian “Drac’s Back!” Jul 1984“Look in the coffin room. He’s always in the coffin room…”“Drac’s back!Finally meeting up with Dave Vanian turned out to be something of an anticlimax. Now there’s no insult intended here, it’s just that I had such a good time trying to find him.It all began when the meeting place was changed at the last minute. “Hasn’t Dave phoned you?” the man in the manager’s office inquired, a look of pure innocence on his face. “He’s changed his mind and wants the interview to take place in the Tate Gallery.”But how, I wondered, was I going to find him there? “Look in the coffin room. He’s always in the coffin room when he does interviews at the British Museum. I should try the coffin room. You can’t miss him, he always dresses up like Count Dracula.”Protesting that the Tate was an art gallery and wasn’t likely to have a coffin room was not going to cut any ice here, so there was nothing for it but to make a taxi dash down to the place. There followed an hot of wandering round, making inquiries of gallery attendants (’Hey Malcom. Come and listen to this. There’s bloke here who says he’s looking for Dracula. What do you make of that?’) I could find no coffin room and as far as I could see, no Dave Vanian.I was wrong on the last point of course, as I was to find out later. Dave Vanian was there, casting a cultured eye over the pre-Raphaelite exhibition (entrance £2) - but did the max expect journalists to pay to see him? Well he did, it seems, because the next place he arranged to meet was the London Dungeon (entrance £3.50). If you’ve never been there, the place is a shrine to schlock horror. Endless grimy painted showroom dummies losing their worthless lives in a bountiful variety of ways. (’Look! No hands!’).And there amongst it all sat dave Vanian, oddly inconspicuous here, looking every bit like Dracula. Next to him sat his wife, Laurie, looking every bit like Cruella de Ville. The following conversation took place to the strains of the suitably doomy organ music that provides the ambience for the place.What’s the fascination in a place like this? “Well, the funny thing about this place is that it reminds me about where we first used to live. We only just got out last year. It was a basement, so for seven years I never saw anything but brick walls on either side of the windows. And it was really damp. We got flooded three times with sewage and what have you. I don’t know, it just felt a bit like home this place. It even smells the same.”Why has there been the long gap between this album you’re recording now and ‘Strawberries’? “Several reasons. Contractually we had a few sort of problems, and there was a slight rift in the band at one point. We just had trouble getting a new deal for ourselves. It seems that there was a point in our careers when people weren’t too interested. They didn’t think we had too much to offer whereas now I think they’ve changed their minds a little.”So what have you been up to in the intervening period? “One of the things has been working with Laurie in her fashion business, helping her put that together. She’s a designer of long standing, and we’ve had this shop in Hyper Hyper for about six months now. I don’t have much to do with the actual design side of it, but I want to do some men’s things ‘cause I get sick of people saying ‘where can I get a frock coat Dave’. I’d love to be able to make some.”Where can I get a frock coat Dave? “Well it took me about four years to find one.” And then, in a flash they were gone. All that remained in the dundeon was a ghostly voice that seemed to be saying: “Could you mention that we’re looking for backers for the business. If anyone’s interested tell them to get in touch.” -- source link

More pics about