As they gather round the corner table in Norwich’s Gonzo’s restaurant, it would be hard to mistake the exotic ensemble of big hair, bold hats, flouncy shirts and leather trousers sported by the various members of Bad Touch as belonging to anything other than a rock’n’roll band. “We have always wanted to be a feelgood rock band,” says lead singer Stevie Westwood. “You can be a sexy, moody rock band, or you can be a feelgood rock band. We are definitely the second.” 

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Formed in Norfolk by Westwood and guitarist Dan Seekings with bassist Michael Bailey, Bad Touch have recently taken on two new members – drummer Brad Newlands and guitarist Pete Lance. The band were inspired by a youthful love of hard rock acts like Guns N’ Roses and AC/DC, as well as the showmanship of local heroes The Darkness.

The new lineup hits the road in March for an eight-date tour with The Dust Coda, which will see Bad Touch headline shows in Newcastle, Nottingham, Glasgow and their home city of Norwich, as well as playing London’s O2 Academy Islington. The band will play tracks from the three albums they have released on Marshall, including Kiss The Sky, recorded at the legendary Rockfield studio, and their most recent record, Bittersweet Satisfaction, recorded at Marshall’s Milton Keynes studio.

Signing to Marshall felt like a homecoming for Bad Touch. After playing shows around Norwich and nearby Peterborough and Cambridge, Bad Touch entered Marshall’s Ultimate Band competition in 2013 and found themselves in the final five, which meant performing live in Milton Keynes in a showdown with their four rivals. Bad Touch won the event, which meant endorsement from Marshall and a spot on the Download festival lineup. The exposure gave Bad Touch a foothold outside the Anglia region and was followed by a UK tour supporting The Quireboys, where their thrilling live show brought them to the attention of a wider circuit of riff-hungry rock fans.

“The competition was a great way into the Marshall family and they have really taken care of us,” says Seekings. “Since then, I have only used Marshall amps. We stayed in touch and when they started the record company, they asked us to sign. It felt like we’d come full circle and we are part of the family. If I need to borrow something, they will always help. Last Christmas they sent us all Bluetooth speakers and headphones. I got this box at home and thought it was sent to me by mistake, but it was a Christmas present from the label.” 

Indeed, so close is the relationship between label and band that when Marshall wanted someone to test drive the new studio, they invited Bad Touch to Milton Keynes to record with producer Chis Sheldon, whose credits include Foo Fighters, Pixies and Therapy?.

Bad Touch recorded an upbeat version of Edwin Starr’s “25 Miles”, and their current live set includes an even more unlikely cover – Alanis Morissette’s “Hand In My Pocket”.  “People really don’t expect it,” says Seekings. “We started it almost as a joke, but we do it a bit like The Black Crowes and it’s become really popular.”

It’s a track that Westwood particularly enjoys performing as it feels like a special moment for fans – this isn’t a song they have committed to record, so the only way to hear it is by getting to the show. That reflects Bad Touch’s long-standing love of live performance, something that once saw them play 280 gigs in a single year. The group work hard at perfecting their live show and include drums solos, guitar solos and moments of audience interaction – all designed to deliver a memorable experience for fans.

Seekings highlights the importance of growing up with The Darkness as the local heroes. “They put on a great rock’n’roll show in a way that not many bands can do these days,” he says. “They play every gig like it’s Wembley Stadium and that’s what we aspire to. We work hard on the live act. We know we have written good songs, but we don’t just walk on and play them the way we recorded them, say goodbye and leave. We want people to come, to get involved and go home having had a great time.”

City To City: Norwich
Bad Touch sing the praises of the city’s busy live scene

‘‘The thing about Norwich is that it’s about two hours from everywhere,” says Brad Newlands, Bad Touch’s new drummer and a resident of the West Midlands town of Cannock. But with three of the band still living in East Anglia, Norwich remains Bad Touch’s main base and Uncut meets the band in Gonzo’s, a funky burger restaurant where the walls are adorned with pop culture memorabilia. The band are delighted to see Die Hard is being silently played on a big screen, while Newlands taps along to the soundtrack of classic rock and indie. 

Gonzo’s is an ideal spot to talk about the virtues of Norwich as it is nextdoor to sister venue Voodoo Daddy’s, a basement space that hosts regular live shows for Norwich’s busy live scene. “There were three shows I could have gone to just this weekend,” says metal-loving bassist Michael Bailey, who is planning to see a local grindcore band that evening at one of the city’s clubs. 

Like most bands, Bad Touch started local. Their first shows were in their nearest pub, the Cherry Tree in Dereham, a town about 15 miles outside Norwich. The next step saw them join the Norwich live circuit with regular gigs at The Brickmakers and King Edward VII. The Brickmakers, which once hosted a young Ed Sheeran, remains a mainstay of the live scene having survived a rent raise through the support of locals, including Dave Rowntree of Blur, who was then on Norfolk County Council. However, the King Edward VII has closed – and Bad Touch were invited to play the closing night, a bittersweet occasion that allowed them to pay respects to a landmark. “It  had been crucial to our development,” says Stevie Westwood. “It was the first place where we could play loud, get paid and get better.”

Here Norwich’s relative isolation proved to be a benefit, as it gave Bad Touch a secure environment in which to develop their live show, while the infamous restraint of the Norwich audience encouraged them to work hard at building rapport with the crowd. The city’s location means that Norwich isn’t always on the touring circuit, despite the presence of the LCR at the University Of East Anglia, which holds 1,500 and has hosted acts from The Who to The Flaming Lips. Bad Touch have played LCR once, in support of a rapper. “It was a very strange show,” says Westwood. “I remember looking at the audience of 14-year-old girls looking up at us and having the worst time of their lives – but maybe one of them ended up forming a band.”

Another important venue is the Arts Centre, where Richey Edwards once carved “4 Real” into his arm after a gig by the Manic Street Preachers. It’s been a staple on the indie circuit for generations. “One of my favourite gigs was seeing Towers Of London at the Arts Centre when I was 15,” says Seekings. “It was rowdy and crazy and exciting. Norwich isn’t always on the circuit – some bands completely miss it out – so when a decent band comes through, it’s a big deal.” 

When Bad Touch did begin touring the country, Norwich’s location meant long hours in the tour van – which is the ideal time to listen to music through the band’s Marshall headphones or the Middleton Bluetooth speaker. Bad Touch have become so fond of Marshall gear that new guitarist Pete Lance is trying to persuade his wife to have some Marshall amps in the bedroom. “We could use a Marshall stack as a bedside table or a place to throw your clothes,” he grins. “It would look so cool.”

Eager to show off the charms of Norwich – a city that once had a pub for every day of the year and a church for every week – Bad Touch lead Uncut from Gonzo’s through the centre to St Benedict’s Street. This was once a music mecca and still has a couple of record shops and places selling guitars and drums. “When we were growing up, St Benedict’s Street was nothing but music stores and record shops,” says Seekings. “It was like the Denmark Street of Norwich. It had two Cash Converters and the big one only sold music gear.” As bassist Bailey notes, that is where he picked up his first guitar.

Vinyl is still king at record shops like Soundclash, Circular Sound and Press To Play. The window of the latter is adorned with classic LPs including Sgt Pepper and Led Zeppelin II, covers eerily bleached as white as bone after decades of exposure to sunlight. Inside, the owner is celebrating the shop’s 27th anniversary that weekend, delighted to have seen vinyl come back into fashion since he opened the doors in 1997. As the band thumb through the racks, Seekings explains that nearby Soundclash played an important role in the local scene as it was where people went to buy gig tickets in pre-internet days.

The tour of Norwich takes in a couple of pubs and a church before ending at the Waterfront, a blue-fronted 700-capacity riverside venue that has hosted Paul Weller, Nirvana, Arctic Monkeys and Amy Winehouse. It’s a home venue for Bad Touch who will be headlining there in March during their UK tour with The Dust Coda. The band are looking forward to the show, as they rarely play their home city these days. “We aren’t really on the local scene as we are now a national band, so we can’t wait to play here in March,” says Seekings, delighted by Norwich’s still-thriving music scene. “No matter how it gets beaten down, live music never goes away.”

In partnership with Marshall

As Andy Cairns stands outside the Limelight club in central Belfast, he recalls a Therapy? show at the venue many years before. Cairns had come straight from his day job at a tyre factory and was changing out of his work clothes in the car park opposite, when his car was surrounded by the RUC demanding to know what was going on. That was par for the course in Belfast during the Troubles, and although the city has changed a great deal over the past three decades, the Limelight is still standing and so are Therapy?.

That instinct for survival informed the name of Therapy?’s most recent album, Hard Cold Fire. Released by Marshall Records and recorded at the label’s studio in Milton Keynes, the title came from Belfast poet Louis MacNeice. “He talks about people from the north of Ireland having a ‘hard cold fire’,” says Cairns. “It’s a reference to the basalt that is indigenous to the terrain, but we thought it represented our longevity. Like Belfast, we have been resilient and determined and we have weathered with time.”

Therapy? were formed by Cairns and bassist Michael McKeegan in 1989. Drummer Neil Cooper joined in 2002, meaning even the new boy has more than two decades of Therapy? under his belt. Hard Cold Fire is a diverse album and the band have always straddled genres, combining rock, punk, metal and industrial noise since debut single “Meat Abstract”. By 1992, Therapy? were enjoying chart success with “Teethgrinder” and “Screamager”, building an audience that remains loyal to this day.

Speaking on a day off between concerts in Dublin and Belfast, Cairns says the band’s success has a lot to do with their early days, when Cairns and McKeegan were immersed in a DIY scene populated by idealistic kids who wanted to escape sectarian strife. “In music, religion didn’t matter,” says McKeegan, something that came as a relief in a town where everything could be examined to discern your background, from your choice of drink to your favoured taxi service. In a city at war with itself, Cairns and McKeegan had to work harder to make things work. 

“Music meant more to us,” says Cairns. “Bigger bands wouldn’t come to Belfast and the bands that did tended to be metal, punk and indie. I loved Stiff Little Fingers and The Undertones but I was open-minded. If there was a gig in town, I’d go whether it was Jesus And Mary Chain or Erasure. Finding places to practise wasn’t easy and we only had two record shops, so you had to put the hours in. That’s why we’ve never taken it for granted.”

Hard Cold Fire is Therapy?’s best-selling record since the late 1990s. It followed 2020’s Greatest Hits (The Abbey Road Session), another Marshall album that saw Therapy? refresh some of their biggest numbers for a new audience. “We decided to record our 12 Top 40 hits at Abbey Road in one day,” says Cairns. “Some of these versions are much better than the originals, like ‘Opal Mantra’, which came out very quickly on the back of ‘Screamager’. Now it has more heft and sounds a bit like Killing Joke.”

Therapy? have already been with Marshall for almost a decade. Cairns has seen labels come and go, so speaks from a position of authority when he praises the relationship he has with the label. It’s a company that ticks important boxes and which, like Therapy?, has earned a reputation for endurance.

“I am a sucker for things that work, whether it’s the amps or the Marshall Bluetooth speakers and earbuds,” he says, admitting that he does most of music listening at home through a Marshall Middleton speaker. “I don’t like paying the earth for something that doesn’t work. I will play a Marshall amp in a different way to somebody in a hard rock or a classic rock band but I know the Marshall can do that for me. Since we signed for Marshall records, we’ve seen attendances improve and we have made better records. We made the last one at the Marshall studio, which has the classic Neve console. That record sold well because it has all the elements that Therapy? do best – propulsive basslines, compelling drums, catchy riffs and lyrics that look good on the back of a T-shirt. Over the years the attention can wander, but right now we are very focused.”

City To City: Belfast

Andy Cairns reveals the Belfast venues that have fostered the city’s music scene

Few cities in the UK have changed as much as Belfast in the past 30 years, but Andy Cairns knows that that’s a good thing. It’s why he wants to meet at the Oh Yeah music centre, which only opened in 2007 and is a symbol of Belfast’s bright future. “What I love about Oh Yeah is that it’s a sign of hope for Northern Ireland,” he says. “This place is so important for young bands. When Michael and I were growing up, we never had anything like this. Other than Good Vibrations record shop, there was nothing to help us get started.”

Oh Yeah does the lot. Located in the charismatic Cathedral Quarter, there’s a venue space, a rehearsal room and a studio, plus offices for music-related business. Oh Yeah run outreach programmes for young musicians while downstairs there’s a small record shop and cabinets crammed with flyers, records and posters covering the history of Northern Ireland music – Therapy? included. 

Aside from donating paraphernalia, the band have performed acoustic shows at Oh Yeah, and occasionally use the rehearsal space and studio. Every year, Oh Yeah organises the NI Music Prize, and in 2014 the Legends award went to Therapy?. The ceremony takes place at Ulster Hall, arguably Belfast’s most prestigious music venue and the scene of Cairns’s first proper gig as a teenage punk. “Siouxsie And The Banshees on September 5 1979,” he says. “I was 13 and I was wearing a Dennis The Menace punk jumper my mum knitted. We were the youngest people there, and I went from elated to terrified. Everybody was older and cooler than us. But the moment the band came on, everything melted. I was buzzing for weeks.”

This experience convinced Cairns he wanted to become a musician. He attended more gigs at Ulster Hall and Crescent Art Centre, joining a punk community that transcended religious barriers. The scene centred round Caroline Records on Ann Street and the legendary Good Vibrations record shop on Great Victoria Street, where Cairns and his friends could learn about music. Good Vibrations released records by local bands like The Undertones, The Outcasts and Rudi, all of whom Cairns loved – he describes Therapy? as updating the classing Northern Ireland punk sound for the 1990s. From the roof of Oh Yeah he points out graffiti on the site of old punk venue The Harp. It reads “The Undertones… are shit”, a reference to a photo from the back of the band’s first single.

That’s very Belfast. The music history is there, but you need to know where to look. Were it not for a small plaque, you could walk past a blank wall on College Square North and never realise it was the location of the Maritime Hotel, where Van Morrison brought R&B to Belfast with Them.

With that in mind, Cairns heads for Limelight, the rock club where Therapy? played some of their earliest shows. Here is more Undertones graffiti, plus an entire wall of Marshall amps above the bar. That reminds Carins of one of the advantages of being signed to Marshall – access to the factory next to the studio, something that is very handy for a guitarist who has been using Marshall amps since 1992. The company even made four custom amps for the recent tour. “They play really well,” he says of the amps. “The minute I plug in my Gibson SG, it sounds exactly how I want. And I can go anywhere in the world and know somebody will be able to supply a Marshall amp that will sound exactly like I need it to.”

Back in the late 1980s, Therapy? were still playing their hometown for free beer and an education. “Limelight was our first big thing,” says Cairns. “When the band started there wasn’t anywhere to play. There was one rock bar and they liked our music but because we didn’t have long hair they wouldn’t let us perform. Then the Limelight opened. We started in the Saturday afternoon 2-5 slot. There was a club night on Thursday and we’d bring along Tad and Mudhoney seven-inches for the DJ to play and the dancefloor would clear.” 

From Limelight, it’s a short walk to the Ulster Hall, a venue that Therapy? have headlined numerous times, including a memorable night in 2009 when they were photographed backstage with Northern Ireland peers Ash, Divine Comedy and Snow Patrol, all of whom had enjoyed success despite growing up in a divided city. Every visit to Ulster Hall has significance for Cairns. “When I went to a gig at Ulster Hall I liked to be in the same spot right at the front,” he says. “When we played Ulster Hall for the first time in 1992, I realised that somebody would be standing in the same place with their heart racing feeling exactly the same way I used to when I was waiting for the band to come out.”

It’s that personal connection that ensures Therapy?’s shows at Ulster Hall are always special – their gig in November sold out in days. When Therapy? toured in the 1990s, the nervous support act would invariably come to Cairns and ask for advice on where to go in Belfast to avoid trouble. That doesn’t happen anymore, and that’s why Cairns doesn’t mind when he looks across the road from Ulster Hall and sees another new tower block raising above the streets. “There are a lot of new buildings here, but that’s great,” he says. “I don’t live in the past. I see all the change as a symbol of Belfast’s future.”