SNITCHING POWER

International jetset pop starts SUPERGRASS are exercising their puny bodies in the swanky gymnasium of the Newport Hilton hotel. Drummer Danny attempts to lift some coin-sized weights and collapses under the strain, while heartthrob singer Gaz gasps for breath on the cycling machine and wanders off to warm his werewolf sideburns in the hotel sauna.
This is as it should be. Too much effort, it seems is bad for Supergrass. After all, we are in the week the band release their debut single 'Caught By The Fuzz' for Parlophone, and already they've propped up Ride at the Albert Hall, warmed up for Blur at their Ally Pally bash and found themselves wreaking mild havoc in five star hotels whilst motoring around the UK with Shed Seven. Erm, isn't all this meant to come later?

Gaz, inexplicably wearing a donkey jacket with grey leather shoulder pads, answers in a pop star whisper:"Yeah, people might think we're too much too soon, but things are being offered to us and we have to go along with them, y'know? We're not desperate to get straight in the charts or anything..."

There is a reason for such deep level-headedness. Deep in the mists of time Gaz and Danny were the force behind juvenile janglers The Jennifers, a group who, having conspired to land themselves a deal with Suede's label Nude, fell apart before anyone really had a chance to write them off for their excessive youth (Danny 'can't remember' what year he was in at school at the time, Gaz reckons he was probably in the fourth year). After a year of rehersals - and Danny's expulsion from school, natch - they finally came to apoint where they'd progressed way beyond their previous incarnation. Is Supergrass the natural end result then?

Danny dons his rose-coloured spectacles.

"Definately! We had two years of travelling around in transit vans, and we had a brilliant time, and in the end it's led us to what we're doing now."

What he's actually talking about is the single 'Caught By The Fuzz', a tangled two and a half minutes of fuzztone Noo Wavery and Gaz's splendid heart-in-mouth vocal, is miles from the clear-skinned bluster of two years ago. Indeed, its poetic depiction of a brush with the law over possession of erm, herbal cigarettes, is teen angst incarnate. Or is it?

"Well, it's a bit of a shame that there aren't more teenage bands," offers Gaz, noting his band's current contribution to Fierce Panda's 'Crazed And Confuzed' EP alongside the freshfaced likes of Ash and Credit To The Nation. "people make more of a fuss about us and the songs just because they see us as some sort of novelty. But to be honest, I'm more interested in the idea of people accessing us on our own terms rather than lumping us in with any scene. People have said 'Caught By The Fuzz' is an agressive late-'70s sort of record, but I don't really think it is. When people hear the next one they'll realise that we're more influenced by the '60s than anything else."

Gaz pauses for a moment's thought on their whirlwind career to date.

"It is weird the position we're in, though. It's like just before we went on at the Albert Hall I said to the others, what are we doing here, man? We should be doing our homework or something. And all our mums were there as well, in these boxes in the balcony. It was bizarre."

The way things are going, Supergrass' lives are going to get weirder by the minute. Spread the word around.

NME - 15 October 1994