from the keyboard of Andrew Needs (he woz guitarist):

"Yes a terrible business with breaking up, and the vultures will tell horrible stories about Poptones and failures. Its sad the rest of us never got to talk to Zac about this before he found out. What happened in effect was that Neil, Daniel, Phil and I decided our heads had dropped so low and life was becoming rather an obstacle that we couldn't carry on. We wanted to speak to Zachery before the Elbow Rooms but he had some terrible news that day and we couldn;t bring ourselves to, and then the rumours started.And there were these portents of doom, like on that day the guy who mastered Blue Skies died and on the sunday our bunker was knocked down for re-development and i woke up in the night and stepped on my old guitar entriely breaking one string and my own heart.Its a bit hard to admit your best days are well and truly on someones camera phone sometime near last christmas.

There are so many reasons for this and this is only my version of why we have finished. And its not some easy jobsworths from Camden saying ''hey hey it's finished man'', since i have been in this band since the age of about 19, when i had hair a bit like Jarvis Cocker. It really hasn't been fun so much this year. We made a terrible mistake in signing to Poptones. I can remember arguing about this in a pub once with someone. It cheapened the music we were trying to project. Any label with phenomenal shit like THe Unstrung, The Paddington and The Others damned us. It ruined our reputaion which until then we'd worked so bloody hard.

THere obviously were some problems within the band between members, particulalry between zachery and myself. This is not anything to do directly with why we have done this, and we will all be freinds im sure. But obviously people's lives have somewaht darkened this year and to the extent of threatening the vivre and the dedication of playing your hearts out in public. A dark collection of indiviuals stopped me wanting to do this, namely the fucking drugs wankers and stupid girls who think their Nancy Spungen. And I get these awful tales of ' i saw zach the other day' on the rare occasions i leave my house. And everything went rather grim since we got signed for whatever reason. It used to be the easiest thing before last christmas. I has this job and i counted the hours to the next gig, changed into my jeans and ran to the venue; playing being such a bloody pleasure and a source of excitement. The last few gigs- except the good ship- i felt sick at the prospect at standing in front of people with somebody else's electric guitar, since I believed not in what i was doing.

I would like to thank all the decent people on here who have supported us in the last couple of years.
Particularly Uncle Doug who managed to keep our band alived when we toured by the rare trait of having an imagination and a kindness. Obvious thanks to Alison, Phil, and Mayer for building these frames and also, the choppers, the trotters and the scoffers.

So in essence we last the will and heart gradually got eroded by the usual things. Getting dropped didn't help. No one wanted a band dropped by Poptones. Though it was the rumblings of change in the offices of Mercury rather than anything he did.

Dunno. There are no plans. I am intending to see Vincent's Villains and old friends, find a regular happiness, get strong again and maybe fall in love. Myself and Daniel wrote all of the music, with Phillip chipping head. The likelihood is that we live together and so we do sit round the fireside singing together with our guitars, so i guess we'll carry on. I have intentions to sell some songs to THe Sugababes, i think their manager might take one, she likes it. Which would give an untold sense of satisfaction and feeling of those whelks in the sea getting some sort of jacuzzi. I mean yeh we'll always sit and play in the house and record stuff, but no gigs and stuff like that. And I did think of staring a band which would be called Smithereens and sing, but would be too dour in the face and not fair in the exuberance enough to entertain the young crowds that are so much a part of the modern music scence.

I would like people to be able to have free access to our album. Maybe we can all sit down and make it availiable with artwork.

Some minor things. I hated Blue Skies the song and the stupid jolly goonish image of our band. I guess a lot of it was my fault, but i wanted rto mix maudlin with Monty Pyton and it went a bit wrong. I mean that song was about the last thought s homosexual thespian dying of cancer, not sure why its seen with such happy happy.. Actually its probably gos it goes "to the left" a bit. I dunno what people really though of us, not very good with them; like shoes in wide sizes they don't fit me properly.

I am bitter about the music business.It depressed and hurt me from all belief. The alternative bands being trite and formulas beyond belief.And I could never handle seeing boring crap like Dogs and it just makes you angry and these talentless dumb boys prattling on about hating there little garden city where they grew up and throwing their own fathers credit cards in the faces of their teachers and people who do something useful like sacrfice their own dreams because they believe in others. Seeing Vincent Vincent and The Villains on saturday reminds me of everything thats just amazing about human beings and the atmosphere, if we generated even a quarter of the feeling i had when i watched them then I can always say my life has been some sort of success."