SPILL FEATURE: WE JUST WANTED TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT MAKING MUSIC AGAIN – A CONVERSATION WITH KAV OF BLITZ VEGA

WE JUST WANTED TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT MAKING MUSIC AGAIN

A CONVERSATION WITH KAV OF BLITZ VEGA

Blitz Vega is not a person, although it would make for a great name of a musician or actor from the 1950s. It is a band, featuring Andy Rourke (The Smiths) and KAV (aka Kav Sandhu) of The Happy Mondays. They are set to release their debut album, Northern Gentlemen. Sadly, Andy Rourke passed away on May 19, 2023, but KAV has made sure that the world will hear the music he made with Blitz Vega.

“It’s been an unusual situation, so just plowing ahead with it has been the only thing to finish that cycle,” KAV said during our recent conversation via Zoom, clearly still very shaken by the passing of Rourke. “That’s what he wanted, and that’s been the driving force, really.”

KAV and Rourke had known each other for some time before they collaborated and formed Blitz Vega.

“I was playing in a band with my friends from my hometown in Leicester. We were playing in a gig in Manchester, the audience happened to be people from our favorite bands at the time. You had members of New Order, Oasis, and Mani of The Stone Roses brought Andy down because he was already aware of the band. Andy saw us that night, I was about 17 at the time, and he was really kind afterwards. He gave us a lot of thumbs up. He made us feel good about what we were doing.

NORTHERN GENTLEMEN TO BE RELEASED ON APRIL 26

“Then a few years later, I was doing some events in London called Get Loaded, and we booked Andy and Mike Joyce as DJs, and generally Andy would be DJing at parties we were putting on. Then we both ended up in the States. Then I was playing Coachella with Happy Mondays, and Andy was DJing that night and after the gig, Andy came up to me and said ‘oh you know, if you ever want to work on something, we should work together at some point.’ I was like ‘yeah, I would love to’. That was 2007, then forward to 2016 Andy is over in L.A., hanging out. I was going into the studio to record some new music and he said ‘I would love to come and play some bass’. He came over, and we started recording some songs. After about two or three songs in, he said ‘we should just start a band.’ The band wasn’t really a band, we had a guitarist, who was working on some of my solo stuff. And we had a keyboard player and then we just recorded and spent all of our time in the studio, and three or four months later we came up with Blitz Vega.”

Northern Gentlemen is a very strong album, full of brilliant music and lyrics. It also features a semi-Smiths run with Johnny Marr guesting on one track, “Strong Forever”. “It came about totally out of the blue,” said KAV. “I had nothing to do with it whatsoever. I had no idea it was coming. We were recording the track, and it was pretty much done. At the time we had the singer from Kasabian, Tom [Meighan] and Andy just called me and said he had just spoken to Johnny and he would like to play guitar on “Strong Forever”. So, that was it. Andy was so excited about it, so proud of that. He absolutely loved Johnny’s guitar and guitar parts. And I loved it, and it was a special night.”

The band had been working on this album for quite some time. But after all the years and work, the payoff is well worth it. It is a beautiful, moving and rocking album. The lack of touring actually made the process longer than shorter.

PHOTO CREDIT: SHANE MCKENZIE

“I realized the other day that this has been the band I have been in for the longest. But it never felt like that because we never really got started as a live band and everything else I had done before that was based around playing live. It never felt it was that long. We cancelled three tours of America. I think it would have been a completely different album if we had gone on tour, because we would have finished it a lot sooner.”

According to KAV, the duo never stopped recording, even though tours were no longer viable, and Rourke’s health was on the decline. “Andy never wanted to stop, no matter how unwell he was. He would jump on a plane from New York, the day after an operation or treatment and he would be in the studio for a week. We would just work on the recording. He was not well, but he never wanted us to feel sorry for him or make a big thing about it, because of his sense of humour it was never part of our conversations in the studio. It was record music, enjoy it and we had fun. I can’t remember a single recording session where we weren’t smiling and joking.”

Although both KAV and Rourke would have liked to have toured with Blitz Vega, it came down to the feeling the two musicians had working together and creating music.

“We always wanted to make an album, and we knew that not everyone listens to albums anymore, but that really wasn’t important to us. We wanted to take Blitz Vega back to that feeling you have, playing guitar and jamming with your friends. We just wanted to feel good about making music again. Not saying we hadn’t, because Andy worked on so many amazing projects and I enjoyed working on projects before. We somehow created that in the studio, don’t know how, but we did. We weren’t trying to be anything or do anything. Every song was quick, we didn’t overdo it, We went in and recorded what we felt. It was simply to make a record that worked and that we enjoyed, and if we enjoyed it, there would be a few other people who might enjoy it too.”

And as for Northern Gentlemen, KAV sees the album not as a tribute to Rourke but rather a great album that had to see the light of day. “I had and have so much respect for him, it is not a tribute, because it is his music and he is playing on it, but in a way it is a diary and description of who he was as well.

Artist Links

Main & Background Photo Credits: Lexi Bonin

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