It’s been a year since our trip to Blackpool’s Rebellion festival to hook up with Wattie and The Exploited for volume four of the LDP legends of punk DVD series and we’re still not finished…
So what’s happened? Well after the initial shoot, we were due to catch up with the band at their London show in November 2022. However the South American tour in between left Wattie in hospital with exhaustion which developed into a series of life threatening burst stomach ulcers forcing the band to take the best part of 6 months off for him to recover.
In March 2023 we revisited the band at their Bedford gig, and who now had stand in drummer, Jo (from Dutch band Disturbance) on board as drumming stalwart and Wattie’s brother, Wullie had also taken some time out to to tend for his wife who had been ill.
A month or so of editing and we had a ‘final cut’ when a huge blow up between Wullie and Wattie took place when Wullie’s comeback dates needed to be changed, ending with him quitting the band and taking the band’s 360k ‘likes’ Facebook page with him. So the ‘final edit’ was requested to be updated.
So…. A year later and we find ourselves backstage at London’s O2 Academy at Islington catching up with bassist, Irish Rob and Guitarist, Stevie on how the last year has treated them and well as a quick chat with new drummer, Jo.
Now instead of merely catching up with Wattie and replacing clips here and there to keep the DVD release relevant to the current band, we took the opportunity to sit down with the main man and discuss EVERY Exploited album release (and more!) to give a complete new backbone to the film.
Ever wondered why the drums on Horror Epics sound like they do? Or why Death Before Dishonour ended up with the sound it did? Or what happened in the studio whilst recording Troops of Tomorrow? Or why Wattie believes The Massacre is the most important Exploited album of them all?
As good as they are V1-3 of Legends of punk were only ever meant to be an ‘in their own words’ history of the bands featured (Discharge, GBH and The Varukers) in a ‘getting to know them a bit’ kind of way.
Thanks, Stuart.
www.StuartNewman101.com