Vince Ray: Rockabilly Voodoo

"On paper, he’s the overlord of a glamorous netherworld where femme fatales and hot rods mingle centre stage..."

There was a time when nostalgia could kill. When Johannes Hofer coined the term in 1688, he did so with an image of Swiss mercenaries in mind – men who, stuck in the lowlands of France and Italy, would pine after their mountainous homeland until they made themselves sick. The prognosis for soldiers suffering from nostalgia or mal du pays (homesickness, to you and me) was simple: return home and live, or stay away and die.

Over time, nostalgia made its way out of the medical lexicon and into the general vernacular, brushing off its reputation as a disease and morphing instead into a badge worn in reverence of the good old days. To be nostalgic was to be romantic, a wistful emissary of a time before the fall. Time had done what time does best; softened the negative, the suffering and pain, into an idealised shadow of its former self – a memory that only recalls half the truth.

Paying homage to legends

I expected Vince Ray to be a terminal case. As an artist and musician, his work doesn’t just dip into the past for a hit of inspiration – it lives and breathes circa 1950-1979, an era that ignited with rockabilly and ended in punk. On stage, he pays homage to legends of the day, combing a quiff to rival Cochran, popping a collar like The King, and busting out the same bad-ass theatrics that made Lux of The Cramps the ultimate frontman. On paper, he’s the overlord of a glamorous netherworld where femme fatales and hot rods mingle centre stage, and guitar-based voodoo casts zombies under the spell of rock‘n’roll. Together, his art and music synergise into a singular tribute to a bygone era.

And yet, sitting here in his North London home, there isn’t a pair of rose-tinted glasses in sight. Vince may be an ambassador of yesteryear but, surrounded by his beautiful three-month-old daughter, Scarlet, and equally striking ‘Missus’, Katie, this is one time-travelling envoy who won’t be fooled by idyllic visions of the past.

“As much as I do look back, the nostalgia side of it is not really what I’m into,” he says, coating his words with a Northern lilt. “Because often I think if you did go back to the ’50s, it wouldn’t be like people think it was. I don’t think there would be kids running around in leather jackets and hot rod cars everywhere. There’d be a few who would probably be aware of those things and into rock‘n’roll music, but I think we’ve glamourised it, exaggerated it, coloured it in – made it so much more of a movement than it ever was in the first place. I mean, originally it was just a few hillbillies making records and releasing them on small labels in the late ’50s – a bit like punk rock in the ’70s.”

They may well have been “just a few hillbillies”, but these unwitting progenitors sparked a movement that would go on for generations to come, reborn and reinterpreted by a lineage of successors looking for something to counter the culture of the day. Whether they were jiving to a rockabilly slap bass in Tennessee or throwing in punk for that psychobilly edge, they were taking rock‘n’roll and giving it a new form – with new lingo, new attitude and new dress code to match.

Just a big kid

And all the while, there was Vince, in his childhood home in Nottingham, taking it all in. “I suppose my mum and dad’s influence with rock‘n’roll music of the 1950s started things off,” he says. “Then I saw the 1968 comeback special that Elvis did, and I still remember going out and buying a leather studded belt and black sunglasses and sticking me hair back. I also remember everybody laughing at me because I was only 10. I guess I’ve just taken what influenced me as a kid into my adult life.”

From those formative threads – the rockabilly riffs, the 'Hammer Horror' films, the pulp fiction magazines inhabited by greasers, gals and hot rods – Vince has woven himself a lifestyle immersed in the things he loves, “escaping from Nottingham to go to art school in Maidstone” at eighteen, before undertaking a post grad at the Slade School of Fine Art. Soon enough Vince the student became Vince the entrepreneur and, along with two friends, he found himself designing sets for music videos, interiors for clubs and “doing any artwork they could find, mostly adult comic strips that, for want of a better word, were a bit rude”.

Illustrator by day, frontman by night

With artists like Coop propelling the lowbrow art movement in the States, the time was soon ripe for Vince to step out alone to work as an illustrator by day, and play as a frontman by night. The art may still keep the bread on the table, but it’s the music that gives the buzz. “I regard both the art and music creatively as the same thing,” he says, “the only difference being that the artwork earns me money; the music doesn’t.
I should give all my time to the art and just regard the music as a hobby, but I hate the word hobby – it sounds like you’re fooling around. But music is my passion. It should always be your dream in life to do what you love and somehow make money out of it too.”

By doing what he loves, Vince has already walked an impressive path. As frontman for two namesake bands – Vince Ray And The Boneshakers and the heavier Vincent And The Razorbacks – he’s supported the likes of The Meteors, Demented Are Go and even, in 2008, the band he credits with “reinventing rock in the ’80s”, The Stray Cats. He may have come far, but the love is still strong. “It’s a scene that’s quite devoid of politics,” he says. “But that’s what I love about rockabilly and psychobilly – it’s a celebration of life. It’s about light-hearted indulgences and getting your kicks – and that’s quite hedonistic, I suppose.”

A change in outlook

Hedonism and fatherhood don’t exactly go hand-in-hand. But whether he’s still singing about rock‘n’roll zombies or drawing buxom vixens with devilish form, no one knows this more than new-dad Vince. “Everything about how you saw your life in the future goes all fuzzy,” he says, “and then it evolves into something new. Obviously you stay the person you are, but your outlook does change. It’s natural, you can’t resist it – your values go out the window and new values come in.”

Having spent a lifetime looking back, Vince Ray is looking forward to… looking forward. After all, there’s no time for nostalgia when your future is just thirteen weeks old.