Debbie Googe, bassist and Bilinda Butcher co-vocalist and guitarist : My Bloody Valentine

[the_future_modernes]

My Bloody Valentine website Bilinda Butcher's guitar rig

Picture of my Bloody Valentine with some of their musical gear


My Bloody Valentine: Butcher's Block

Did you like the band before you joined?


I still don’t have any records from before I joined them. They were very indie at the time. They all had really cool haircuts and they were very cute. The song titles were really twee, like Sunny Sundae Smile and Paint a Rainbow. It sounds very innocent but the lyrics were very dirty. Paint a Rainbow is about necrophilia and there’s some really disturbing images in that song. So obviously, that was the first song I learned how to play on the guitar.


Had you ever been in a band before?


I had a band with some girlfriends for fun. We did covers of Marc Bolan and classics like Louie, Louie. I sang and played the tambourine. When I was little I played classical guitar for years, but at that stage I hadn’t touched a guitar for a long, long time. So at my first My Bloody Valentine gig two weeks later, I was playing the tambourine and was carrying Toby. We played in a squat and I didn’t dare put him down on the floor. I tried to learn the guitar the best I could, but above all I was always on time for rehearsals. There was actually a guy who joined the band at the same time as me, but he was never on time and when he eventually arrived, he was always stoned so he got the sack.

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How did you write your lyrics?


A lot of the lyrics are plain nonsense. I don’t know, I didn’t have a plan and I never thought about lyrics until it was time to write them. I just used whatever was in my head for the moment. Kevin didn’t touch them, though he once made me change one thing that he didn’t like. He gave me the melodies in quite some detail. He never sang any words on the cassettes I got but I tried to make his sounds into words. It always became my own thing in the end though. And that was the only power I had in the band.

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How many guitars did you have?
Live, I think we had seven or eight each, sometimes more.

Kevin is known for playing on a red Fender Jaguar. Did you have a preference?



I also had a Fender Jaguar that I used most of the time, in white. But my favourite was a really beautiful green Charvel that I still keep in my bedroom.MORE

My Bloody Valentine - Only Shallow

Debbie Googe Wikipedia

Before joining My Bloody Valentine, she lived in Somerset and played for a band called Bikini Mutants, who gigged with The Mob.^[3] Googe had moved from Bristol to London, and in early 1985, an ex-girlfriend of hers recommended her as a bass player to Kevin Shields and Colm Ó Cíosóig of My Bloody Valentine. She joined the band after an audition in April 1985. She left in the group in 1995, noting she "hadn't been happy for a long time".^[3]
Googe is known for her raucous style of bass playing in MBV's live performances. However, it was Shields who played the instrument on many of the band's recordings.

Debbie Googe!!! My Bloody Valentine @ the Roundhouse

Apparently, Ms Googe left My Bloody Valentine in 1995 and proceeded to form the band Snowpony with her then girl friend Kathy Gifford. When the band reunited in 2007, though, she did return.

Snowpony - Snowpony - Snow White (live) You can catch a glimpse of two of her in this vid)

Snowpony - John Brown (Triumphal March) live

Snowpony's Wiki here

2001 Interview with Debbie Googe here

If we could start back at the beginning if that’s ok, where you in any bands prior to My Bloody Valentine?

I was in a band call ‘Bikini Mutants’ when I lived Somerset, this was in the ‘positive punk’ era we used to play a lot of gigs with ‘The Mob’ (Crass signed proto positive punk band), we played around the west country quite a bit but not really anywhere else.

When did you first meet Kevin, Belinda and Colm?

At different times, I met Colm and Kev first. I met them in April 1985 . They had been living in Berlin and were talking about moving to London, they just happened to ask an ex girlfriend of mine who was living in Berlin at the time if she knew any bass players (at that time they had a keyboard player but no bass player….shameful !!), she gave them my phone number and when they arrived here they gave me a ring and that was it really. I went along to a practice and they never really said you’re in the band they just kept saying ‘we’re practicing again next week if you want’ and then after a while we went in the studio to do the first ep (‘Geek’), so I just sort of assumed I was in by that point. Bilinda joined in 1987, she came for an audition and sang ‘Bargain Store’ by Dolly Parton which was more than enough to win me over.

You were signed to Lazy Records for a while, did The Primitives crossing over into the mainstream affect your relationship with the label?

Obviously with the success The Primitives had they became the main focus of Wayne’s attention, but they were on the label before us anyway and Wayne had been working (with) them for quite a while. MORE

Review of the recent live stage show, which is apparently fucking loud! :)