Interview with Jon Jeary

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Well Jon, the history of Threshold since you recorded Wounded Land five years ago has been talked about a lot, but not many people know much about the five years before that. What are your most lasting memories of those early years?


Longcross Village Hall, basically, where we used to rehearse. I was just listening to our Cult of the Immortal CD the other day, and that just brought back all the memories. Karl used to have this studio in his bedroom, he was the most amazing bloke I'd ever met. He'd suggested we recorded some vocals for this new track we'd done, and he had an 8 track reel-to-reel tape deck, mixing desk and all the effects in his room. I used to stand there singing really loud, trying not to wake his parents up. He used to put his guitar amplifier in the bathroom to get a better sound, and run the microphone leads under the door. It was an amazing time for us.


So who was in the band back then?


Me, Nick, Karl and Tony, and various bass players. We started off with a guy called Ian Bennett that I knew through some people at college. I got to know his brother first, and then I got to know Ian, who turned out to be quite a good guitarist. This was about 1987, and at that time I was doing a lot of solo folk gigs at Holloway College, where I was doing a geology degree. I told Ian that I fancied making some PA speakers for doing some pub gigs, and he helped me make them. I don't know if he knew Karl, Nick or Tony, but he was given a tape by somebody who was looking for a bassist and a singer. He told me about it and I thanked him, because I was a bassist and a singer as well as a guitarist. But then he told me that he was going to be the bass player, so I thought "oh no, I've got to be the singer then". I hadn't really thought about being a singer in a rock band, but I went down there and had an audition, and I guess they must have had some pretty awful singers because they thought I was the best thing they'd ever heard.

We did that for about three years, I suppose, just doing pub gigs, and we had a couple of highlights, like doing the Marquee Club with Pendragon on new year's eve in 1989. Then it all went back to the pubs, and we were all expecting it to get bigger and bigger but it didn't. It looked like we were never going to get a record deal. We were sending off our demo tapes, but we couldn't even get anybody to write back and say they thought it was good, except for one standard reply from one major label, and we knew they'd probably just thrown it in the bin. After that, the band all fell apart really. I started playing bass for a band called Mothers Ruin, and then I jammed a few times with Sons of Eden, but they were so loud and too reckless, which I didn't like. I was feeling so depressed and unhappy, until I realised it was because I was in this band and I shouldn't have been. So I phoned Tony and got him to call Karl to start it all up again, and almost immediately we got a record deal. Basically we got the deal because of Karl, who'd been working with Clive Nolan of Pendragon on some side projects for SI Music, and through those contacts we got signed to GEP. We hadn't signed to SI because they thought my voice was too spikey. I was always my own biggest critic, and I was struggling with my voice because I was always getting sore throats, so I was getting very frustrated and I was quite happy to let somebody else do the job. By then I was also the bassist, and I couldn't play bass as well as I wanted to and sing at the same time. It was always a compromise, so I'd just end up plodding along on the bass.


And then Damian Wilson came in as vocalist. How do you feel about him now?


Fine. You know, I've got no nasty feelings about Damian, but I also don't feel like I wish he was still in the band. Damian was in the band twice, and he left twice. Personally I think he's a great bloke, especially to go down the pub for a pint with. Damian's one of the best singers there is, out of my whole record collection I'd put him quite high up the list. The only other person I can think of like that is Paul McCartney, he just sings whatever he wants.


So what do you think of your new vocalist Mac?


I know I've said this before, but I think Mac is likely to stay with the band until its demise. He seemed really happy doing what he did on the album, he's got to be the most amiable guy we've ever had doing vocals. There wasn't one iota of ego there, he didn't have what I call LSD - Lead Singer Disease! So I hope Mac stays in the family for ever.


You mentioned earlier that you were listening to an old Threshold CD called Cult of the Immortal, which is presumably an old demo that nobody's heard. Do you think that the old recordings would ever be released?


I haven't got a clue. As soon as I heard it I was amazed by the sound quality, although there was plenty of tape hiss on it. Before I'd only had fairly bad tape copies of it, because we'd only made them to sell at the pub gigs, so when I put on the CD I was blown away with the quality. Some of the songwriting wasn't too bad either, and there were a couple of songs that actually made it onto Threshold albums too. One was "Paradox", which was probably the first song we ever wrote. Also there was "Aftermath", which went on to be called "Babylon Rising". I think actually that the original was a far superior version. There were two other demo tapes we did before that. One was called Mother Earth, which has obviously got "Mother Earth" on it, with my vocals which I hope no-one ever hears!


That's the one you fainted on?


Yeah! I used to think I could do this Robert Plant falsetto, but not really. "Paradox" was on that tape too, and a song called "Endless Sea", which we later took the verse part from and used it in "Into the Light" with different lyrics.


Well it's ten years since you started recording those demos and gigging. Are you looking forward to the next tour as much as you used to?


Yes, I'm looking forward to this one for the first time, actually. Well obviously on the first one I'd never been on tour before, so I was really excited. But now I've had that naivity beaten out of me by what a slog it is, because it's really hard work. You're in this situation where you've got to perform every night and you've got to be on top form every time, you're living rough on a bus, you don't know where your next wash is coming from, so you can't always perform at your best in those situations. The best thing is those two hours on stage, but the hanging about is the worst. Every night before you go on there are those couple of hours of build-up, where you don't really know what to do with yourself. You can't really do anything because you have to go on soon, so you just sit there wasting time. Sometimes you just want to be at home watching television!


So how does it feel to be in Threshold in 1998?


It's become a lot less difficult to be in Threshold, now that everybody's not so manic and franctic about it all. We've achieved a certain level of success, and we're more successful than we've got a right to be. We've made a 100% go of this band, and the only difference between a band like us and, say, Dream Theater, is luck. But I'm quite at ease about it all now. A few years ago when we were doing our first tours and recording our first albums, we all thought it was going to grow and grow, and that we'd all become internationally famous superstars. But now I've realised that we've done as much as we can by hard work and that we can't go any further without that roll of the dice, so I feel much better about keeping on doing it. I don't need that success anymore to make my life worthwhile. Being in Threshold before was a bit frustrating, but now it's just sublime. Nowadays I think we're all more mature, and it's just like a club that we all belong to.


So what about the next ten years?


Karl said to me the other day, "let's just keep on making albums until we're old men". So as long as somewhere like GEP will let us do it, we'll keep on making albums.