Vernons Future were forged in the white heat of indie’s golden age in the 80s, and were signed to the legendary Liverpool label, Probe Plus, as The Vernons. Now they're back mightier than ever...

Vernons Future were forged in the white heat of indie’s golden age in the 80s, and were signed to the legendary Liverpool label, Probe Plus, as The Vernons. Melody Maker said that their debut LP, ‘Smithdown Road’ was “a fine debut in love with pop at its most unassuming and most charming”). Now reformed as Vernons Future, they released their sophomore album ‘Aquaplaning’ in 2022. We caught up with them recently to probe their reformation…

How’s it going guys?

ANDY: At the time of writing our new single Waxwings has just come out, and so we’re excited to share that. We don’t have new releases that often so each one feels a bit special for us.

It’s October 1989, your debut album “Smithtown Road’ has just dropped on Probe Plus, how do you feel?

ANDY: That was a very exciting time! We’d been working with Geoff Davis at Probe Plus for a while (there had been a cassette-only EP release prior to the album) and it was great to finally get to the point of releasing Smithdown Road. We arranged a gig for the release, but, in somewhat typical Probe fashion, only the cassette version was ready. The LPs finally arrived in January 1990. The gig was pretty epic though – something like 400 crammed into the Liverpool Poly SU bar. The gig is actually available to watch on our YouTube – pretty much the only video we have of the first iteration of the band.

What was it like to be part of the Liverpool scene back then? What venues did you play (The Cavern, The Warehouse etc)

ANDY: Yeah, we played at The Cavern, which was cool to say we’d done it, but our favourite regular venues were The Flying Picket, the Poly SU, and the back room at The Philharmonic pub when we first started playing regularly in town. It was a really vibrant scene, and we made friends with plenty of bands, such as St. Vitus Dance, The Onset (both also on Probe) and Benny Profane, and you could catch The La’s playing somewhere in town pretty much any night of the week – seriously hardworking, and quite brilliant, of course…

What’s the stand-out gig from those times?

ANDY: We had some good support slots, and perhaps the most memorable was to Frank Sidebottom (twice actually!). The crowd were well up for it, and we went down really well both times. He was a lovely bloke, and he just rocked up at the venue lugging only a bass drum case…containing the head!

TOM: playing with The Farm at the Royal Court – all of us onstage together doing Elvis Costello’s classic Pump it Up – was pretty memorable..

Who were your early influences? And who would you list as your contemporaries now?

TOM: Numerous individual influences (I was into Hawkwind, the Grateful Dead and Frank Zappa- most of the others weren’t…) but back in the day probably Prefab Sprout, The Pale Fountains, The Farmers Boys maybe.

Current contemporaries – um, no idea. I don’t think we align with a particular sound.

Vernons (The Pool Company) has a great history with the city, is that where the name came from?

ANDY: It might have been there subconsciously but I’m pretty sure we picked the name after the Mount Vernon pub (now gone sadly) that we used to pass on the way to practices. Others may remember differently!

Since putting jump leads on your nipples and re-invigorating the band, what would you say has changed?

ANDY: Well, we ended version 1.0 as an 8 piece, which, while a super collection of people, was pretty unwieldy to organise! So only having 5 now makes life a little easier in that way. I also think that none of us really expected to play together again (it HAD been 25 years after all!) and so it really feels like a bonus to be doing gigs and releasing songs again, and we are loving it.

I guess we should also mention the advent of home recording, streaming, social media and indeed the internet(!) which all came along while we were away. I dunno – you turn your back for a quarter century and looks what happens…!

How has your sound developed since those heady times?

TOM: Back in the day it was a bit of a mish mash of ideas and youthful energy. Nowadays I reckon more thought goes into creating and structuring our sound, with a conscious effort to create breathing space in the music. And there’s now no brass (most of the time).

Where’s home now?

ANDY: We all left Liverpool in the early 90s, and by the time we came to play together again in 2015 we had seen band members strewn around the world – Hong Kong, France, Japan had all been home to various Vernons. Nowadays three of us are in north London and two over near Oxford (Abingdon and Witney to be precise), and we often rehearse halfway, between, in High Wycombe. I guess that Liverpool will always be something of a spiritual home for us though…

There’s everything from 60’s pop to Americana in there, you’ve gone all eclectic?

ANDY: Yeah I guess we just head off where the song suggests! TBH the first album ticked off a fair few bases too, so maybe no major change there!

TOM: Actually I think it’s way less eclectic now, though Steerpike is an exception.

Why FUTURE (Is it because of the Aussie Blues band who stole your name in your absence?)

ANDY: How dare they!! Er, actually it was for a couple of reasons. We had heard of an American band calling themselves The Vernons, but also we felt we were now a different band to a degree – we wanted to do new songs, but also the lineup was significantly changed, with only 4 of the old 8 piece lineup now involved…

‘Steerpike’ is pure nostalgia and could have been written by Echo and The Bunnymen whilst sheltering in Erics on a rainy afternoon, is this a glimpse of a new direction?

ANDY: Nice image! We have always loved The Bunnymen to be fair, and that Liverpool music scene at the start of the 80s was a key reason for me moving there. (We were in the same halls of residence that Julian Cope describes in his (quite brilliant and hilarious) book Head On). I don’t know if it will be a new direction as such though – we tend to work song by song. Maybe we should take a more unified approach to song writing though?!

Following the recent riots, do you feel there’s hope for the UK or are we on a downward spiral and out of control? We did alright at the Olympics!

ANDY: Social media definitely needs better regulation – X under Musk has become an enabler of the far right. We have stopped using X, which is galling as it’s where we had most followers, 10k built up over a few years, but we could no longer in all conscience continue to use it while Musk replatformed some accounts that should definitely have stayed closed, which has had a role in the recent UK riots. However, I think that the community response to the far right rioters was a real cause for optimism – they were helped back in their box by ordinary people standing up to be counted.

Will the Labour Party give back hope top the arts (and musicians) or is it ‘meet the new boss…same as the old boss?’

ANDY: There are 5 of us in the band so probably a range of views on this but I’m definitely optimistic about the new government. I’d love to see them support the Music Venue Trust campaign for a £1 levy on gig tickets to support grassroots venues. I guess we’ll see!

Any plans for more gigs during the rest of the year?

ANDY: We’ve deliberately been playing fewer this year but we do have a couple in London before the end of 2024 – we support Liverpool band The Real People at O2 Academy 2 in Islington on Fri 8/11, and we’ve not played with them since 1989(!), then at The Spice of Life, Soho, on Saturday 7/12.

What’s the aspirations for the future?

ANDY: Finding the perfect pop song. Simple!

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