LIVING IN A BOX - Richard Darbyshire
It isn’t but I found myself repairing our garden gnome, Godfrey, after clipping him with the lawnmower the other day. I’d whipped round the lawn and carelessly taken his knee off. I made such a good job of the repair that I got to thinking that if things don’t work out, I’m seriously up for opening a Gnome Home. Think about it, thousands of gnomes up and down the land, left out in the cold to suffer the indignities of the British weather and assaults by wild animals and lawnmowers. There’s money in gnome refurbs, I tell you.
Gnome refurbishment? Doesn’t sound very Rock ‘n’ Roll!
Stats
name Richard Darbyshire
INSTRUMENT Songwriter/Vocals/Guitar
HOBBIES Gnome refurbishment
doing Now Songwriter/Producer
Tell us about the music you are doing now and the new artists you are developing?
I’m still writing and producing full time and I’m having great fun doing it. Working with new talent is really refreshing. The artist I’m working with currently is a 16 year old singer/songwriter called Max Tuohy. You can find out more about him and the music we are creating at www.maxtuohy.com We are in negotiations with Sony/BMG for him and I believe he has a really exciting future ahead of him. Right now, we are writing with Crispin Hunt who co-wrote the Newton Faulkner hit ‘Dream Catch Me’ and the results are really exciting.
What do you miss the most, if anything, about the 80s and the Living In A Box days?
I don’t miss being torn from my bed at 4.00 a.m, still lashed from the night before, to be shoved onto a plane and whisked off to some Euro capital. On arrival, I recall being assaulted by various make up artists and being made to dance around to one of our songs on a stage usually piled high with cardboard boxes (funny the first time but boring after a while). It took a couple of mini bars to calm us all down when we’d been doing this for a few years so, in answer to your question, no, I don’t really miss much about that side of things.
The eighties were a great decade. I think most people reading this would agree. The fans were just that, fans. Today with all the downloading and so on, music is listened to in a different way. We download tracks, often not knowing who they are by or, even more interestingly, when they were written. On the negative side this can create a lack of a passionate, informed fan base because we simply don’t care about who wrote this or that. The result of this can be that we don’t support artists outside of the songs we drop into our iTunes playlists. On the positive side, music has become even more timeless. Kids download something because they like it, even if it’s twenty years old, not because it’s the latest record company push. We are finding that new audiences are being turned onto Living In A Box’s music, more now than ever.
Is it true that you are addicted to Guitar Hero 3?
Yes, absolutely! I just can’t get enough of it. When we were in the studio recording Living In A Box songs, I had a Rock God alter ego and often cranked up the amps and rocked out for a laugh and I’ve rediscovered this with Guitar Hero 3. I’ve always loved ‘face melter’ guitar solos but there was never much call for them on dance/RnB records in the eighties. Brian May, of course, obliged on Blow The House Down and I’m quite proud of my solo on Room In Your Heart but none of those really measure up to Tenacious D’s ‘The Metal’ LOL!!
