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“OOOOOOOOOOOH!!! KESTREL STORY!!!!!YES!” Wayne Murray (Telletubby name: Bo!), Thirteen: 13’s lead singer has just jumped about 3 feet in the air with enthusiasm. His bandmates are groaning with embarrassment. “This is SUCH a true story, I swear. On my life. There’s no witnesses, and I’ll tell you why there’s no witnesses in a minute though.” He gets up and DiS sinks even further into the big, red, 1970s style armchair that is eating me alive. “I go in the room [at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire], and the room is pretty small. So I’m the first person at soundcheck so I get in. I open the door and there’s a kestrel about THIS BIG” He indicates that it was about a foot tall. “and the window is kind of, like, closed. This kestrel is trapped in this room and there’s no where else to get in. I SWEAR to God this is the truth. So I look at this kestrel. I kinda look outside, I’m waiting for someone to come in and no one’s coming in. So I go in the room, just a little bit, to see if the bird’s all right and the kestrel starts freaking out. Starts whacking itself, starts whacking its wings, starts smashing itself against the window trying its best to get out. So I quickly push the window and it just flies off. That’s why there were no witnesses. I was gonna….but it would’ve been to do this kestrel. But it’s a true story I swear.” All of the above was performed with actions and kestrel-freaking-out arm flapping. Hmmmmmm. Did you pick up any feathers from it, sort of from when it freaked out? “um, no..er. But it’s a true story, I swear on my eyes.” I can’t help thinking that Wayne now looks like the kid at school who’s trying to persuade their teacher that the dog really DID chew up their homework. But I can’t help feeling that he must have come face to face with a very large pigeon. Thirteen: 13’s jovial bass player Toby Mcfarlaine (Telletubby name: Selecta) chips in, peace sign aloft: “Let’s free the birds, maaaaaaan!”
Their guitarist, Ben Etchells (Telletubby name: Drinky Winky – you’ll soon see why), can just about manage a wan smile as the poor lamb is suffering from what seems to be a killer hangover. Bearing in mind that this interview is taking place at around 5pm in the afternoon he’s still being propped up by the arm of the sofa. According to Wayne and Toby he “arrived back” (well crawled out of a cab) at their hotel at 11.30am: “I remember that really well, I woke up and didn’t know where I was and I’m like “How’d I get here?? What have doooooooooooone????” He’s very quick to add:“It doesn’t happen very often though.” Anyway “here” was some stranger’s house. But dear readers, don’t fear, Ben made sure that he had a bath before leaving so he wasn’t stinky. And the reason for Mr Etchells’ hangover? £13.13p’s worth of tequila. In fact Thirteen:13 er…seem to be followed around by their name. “Since we have been called Thirteen:13 there have been loads of funny little coincidences with 13s popping up all over the place.” Says Toby. “In fact on this last little tour thing we did we went bowling before soundcheck and on the thing it had the speed at which you bowl and I bowled exactly 13 miles/hour and 13 whatever things on the thing, it came up on the computer. And then I bought a hamburger and the little time on the thing was 13:13.” “£13.13p on tequila” comes a thin little squeak from Ben; “yeah he did, he’s got a receipt for it!” adds Wayne. “We should keep all this stuff it would be great!” says Toby “But it does crop up I suppose…” “There’s a society based on numbers and stuff like that, and I’m quite into numbers really and there’s this one number: 23 and now that I’ve told you that and anybody else who reads this; or sees it is just gonna be freaked out because if you think about the number 23 it’s like this number that will just crop up EVERYWHERE. Everything you do you’ll see this number. I mean you could say that for most things anyway but 23, just, trust me.” Says Wayne with all the conviction of a born again Christian. Thing is I know somebody with the exact same theory centred around 52. “Nah it’s 23, trust me!!” I’m afraid Wayne that no, it isn’t 23. I’ve tried, honestly, but the only time 23 (or for that matter 52) crops up is when I’m transcribing this interview! Hasn’t it got more to do with the fact that you’re subconsciously looking for it? “Look on the website, there’s a society of numbers and they’ve spent years….and it’s all and its like a religious cult and erm…..23! Well I dunno, maybe it’s just my number but maybe it’s ‘cos I’m looking out for it. But it’s not daft.”
According to their website biography Thirteen:13 doubled up their name in order to counter any negative vibes maaaaaan that would come from sticking the most malevolent number EVER in your name. So has it worked? “It has and it hasn’t.” Apparently not according to Wayne. “The Melody Maker liked us….” Toby interrupts “Yeah typically we did a great big feature for them ….well not a great big feature… yeah a big interview and a photo shoot and we were gonna have a big two page spread and then the week it was meant to come out they went under.” “Bastards!!!” go the three other band members. “We did consider changing our name from Thirteen: 13.” Says Wayne. “ Big time!!” adds Toby “And that time Ben got chucked off the stage in Glasgow.”
Are you superstitious? “I think yeah we all have an element of superstition. I think most people have an element of superstition.” Says Toby. Wayne: “We listen to Superstition a lot!” Even so they wouldn’t consider changing their name. Wayne: “A name’s a name. With Suede performing I remember reading an early interview with them and it was, like: “the hardest thing we ever done was to come up with our band name.” Y’know It took us aaaaages. It was literally we’re in a band now what are we gonna be called?…..Fuck! Evil eye? Thirteen thirteen? Brown Cow? You can make any name….look at the Beatles! The Beatles was one shit name!”
When I walked into this room the only background information I had on Thirteen:13 was the contents of their website (that at the time had their names mixed up) and the knowledge that Wayne and Ben used to be in Catch and that a certain Paul Winter-Heart (telletubby name Poo Na Na) used to be in Kula Shaker. Now there’s been one thing niggling at me for a while, like, so with all the tact and diplomacy of my mentor George Dubya Bush: “Paul, I was just wondering. Was Crispian as much of a prat as the NME made him out to be?” Ben, Wayne and Toby: “Waaahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!” and they fall over the back of the sofa. Paul, with the seriousness of a man who’s found out that his mum has just died: “No he wasn’t actually.” Well that’s a relief. So what about the impact of these two bands on Thirteen:13? Wayne: “Kula Shaker is I guess much more of a bigger deal than the C-word. But..erm it means nothing.” Toby: “That’s something they did when they were teenagers.” Back to Wayne: “It’s like saying “do you remember shitting your pants when you were 4?” Everybody in the room giggles. Wayne continues: “Which I do actually. On a rocking horse” “Oh gawd!” “On a rocking horse?!” “it was a long time ago. I had to be sent home from nursery. Actually it was in the first week when I started primary school.” That must’ve followed you around for the rest of your school career. “But the thing is, I mean, y’know, that it was horrendous when I got home it was me, my brother and sister.” Everybody’s sitting in rapt attention “I’m not gonna tell this story actually!” Awwwwww go on! Toby: “He’s had an irrational fear of rocking horses ever since!”
You’ve played with two big name acts, My Vitriol and JJ72, what was it like touring with them? “Great…JJ72: were great! My Vitriol……were great!” according to a grinning Wayne. “The my Vitriol tour was a bit of a grueller because it was, well it was a really long tour without many days off so we were all kinda tired and stuff like that.” So, any good tour stories? “We always go out what we call “shining” on the road. Generally in Scotland being the place that it is” says Toby, “ We end up going out and going crazy. We’ve had some good nights out with the JJs. We had a brilliant night out on the My Vitriol tour with the other support band, Mo*ho*bish*o*pi. We just had the most hilarious drunken evening…” Wayne picks up after a wrangle about the club’s name. “But we just got trashed. We were headbanging on the dance floor and jumping around like lunatics. And I’ve just got this enduring image at the end of the night of Martin, the singer of Mo*ho*bish*o*pi going headlong down this big flight of stairs and then kind of crumpling his head of the steps: a proper stunt roll and me picking him up at the bottom and going: “are you alright?” “Yeah fuck I’m fine! Fuck”” Toby in between giggles: “You could never plan anything like that it was just a beating.”
So lastly, but not leastly let’s get onto fans. Believe it or not but Thirteen:13’s record company won’t let them put up MP3s on their site “You’re not allowed to put songs up on the web but apparently you are allowed to send them to people” explains Ben. So the way they’ve gotten around that is by sending out 7 inch singles to their mailing list. How did you get that idea? Wayne, taking the piss from an earlier part of the conversation about the alleged dream Paul McCartney had when he came up with the Beatles: “It came to me in a dream!” hehe “There was a great flaming seven inch single that said “you have to release a seven inch but spelt with an “a”.” Toby: “savan? Savan inch? Sounds like a saveloy. Initially we were gonna send all our friends a saveloy. Friends? I mean fans. Friends fans. Fans, friends it’s all the same thing!” Wayne, the voice of reason for once: “I’ll tell you what, our fanbase is definitely what we’re about at the moment. They’re just great and they’re really loyal. It’s kind of like in the early days hopefully that seven inch makes them feel as though they’re part of something and, like, that we’re actually thinking about them….which we are. And we’ll keep on doing it again and again until our fanbase gets too big.”
The night before Thirteen: 13 had played the Shepherd’s Bush Empire supporting JJ72. ”I saw a lot of people wearing them” says Wayne. “We saw all these fans outside after we’d played. Some of JJs fans with our t-shirts on top of theirs. And I put my head outside the Shepherd’s Bush window and there’s many people waiting for us all to come out and sign things. I just said “aftershow pass, wanna get into the aftershow?” and it just floated down. Next thing WHPOOH!!!” mad punching actions ”everybody starts to go MAD for this fucking ticket!” Toby: “But they all got in in the end didn’t they?” Wayne: “Oh I don’t know what happened. It was just complete carnage literally there was PCHOOO!! And I was so high up, miles up, 5 storeys up, it took 2 minutes to hit the ground!!”
Sounds like the start of superstardom.
