The Hair Blare Bunch - Q April 2001

Toploader like to get the most out of the places they visit on tour. It's just before Christmas and after performing at Hamburg dock's, they are naturally keen to take in the sight's of the town's X-Rated Reeperbahn. Strangely, on these few German dates they share the bill with Coldplay, which is why the ban are currently occupied with persuading their new tourmates to join them in their mission. Tousle-haired Toploader guitarist Julian Deane cajoles Coldplay's Jonny Buckland: "You coming along then?" "No thanks" says Buckland "I've got to go beat Chris at scrabble" "Oh well" comes the riposte. "I've got to get a wank of a whore". The Coldplay guitarist looks palely perplexed before excusing himself and leaving in the direction of some cunning triple word scores.

Anthropologists could write a book about the behavioural differences between Britain's biggest new band and Britain's second biggest new band. But while Coldplay rule the roost at home, they're not at No:1 in the German airplay charts with a song about getting it on most every night like Toploader are. And so, the following night at Berlin's mid-sized Columbiahalle, Coldplay once again find themselves in the lowly supporting slot. Onstage, their singer Chris martin finishes performing Trouble before edging back up to the mic. Something is bothering him, "Ummm....we don't usually support Toploader at home, you know." he assures the relatively unconcerned audience. Toploader have evidently got under his skin. It's an effect that good or bad, they seem to have on everyone. Released last May, debut album Onka's Big Moka (named by Deane, an anthropology graduate, after a Papuan tribal practise) will soon top a million sales. their cover of King Harvest's obscure 1972 soul hit Dancing In The Moonlight has been dancing around the single's chart for months. Their music - a feelgood amalgam of Jamiroquai, Elton John and the bouncier end of Britpop - has assuredly struck a chord. If, in these nervily angstful times, caring Coldplay aim to offer comfort, carefree Toploader are happy to supply some pure, unbridled escapism.

Their extraordinary success has, though, been accompanied by choruses of sniggering disdain. Maybe it's the irrepressible nature of that break through single. maybe it's because of singer/keyboardist Joe Washbourn's oddly springy hair. Or maybe it's down to from hailing from Eastbourne, a location as far removed from rock 'n' roll Valhalla as can be. Whatever the reason, Toploader still feel like the underdogs. Their recent Brit Award nominations - Best Band and Best Newcomer - were virtually the first time their achievements had been recognised.

Post-gig, Washbourn sups on a beer in the band's dressing room. Today his curls are radiating even more lustrously than usual. "I haven't a fucking clue why" He shrugs of his band's perpetual position at the back of cool class. "Were not bothered though, the people like us." Curiously, in 1997 Toploader passed through a brief phase of being deeply influenced by Radiohead's OK Computer. An anomaly in today's musical climate, this amiable troupe of stoners and boozers are alone in consciously opting for old-school populism. It's a route hat has seen them supporting Bon Jovi (making them the last British band to play Wembley Stadium), appearing seemingly every week on TFI Friday and, yes soundtracking those infuriating Jamie Oliver Sainsbury's adverts.

German record executives begin streaming into the tiny room and the group cheerily hand round the beers. For the average rock band with a hit album under their belts, everything is too much trouble. For Toploader nothing is too much trouble. Julian Deane still wild-eyed from his onstage exertions. "I'd just had this really strong weed" he says by way of post-gig analysis. "It's practically hallucinogenic. I went on stage and started losing it. I was panicking there for a couple of songs."

Less crazed but no less hospitable is drummer Rob Green who, as a school boy, played football and badminton for East Sussex and whose discipline in the early days kept the band on track. He still shares a house in Eastbourne with bassist Matt Knight. The closet any of the Toploader members get to being taciturn, his great-great-great-grandfather was, oddly enough, the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton. Like Deane, he hovers near the 30 mark.

But it's the long friendship between Washbourn and Dan Hipgrave, whose dark flicky hair makes him look like one of the dole-scroungers from TV's bread, around which Toploader evolved. While Washbourn recently moved to Hampstead, Hipgrave is staying semi-permanently with girlfriend Gail Porter. But the pair lived together - along with various other loafers - in an Eastbourne smoker's den from the age of 17 until six months ago. Both in their mid-20's, the exude the kind of geezerish well-being peculiar to the south-east of England. "The press just think were a bunch of spastics" he blurts, before mischievously sticking up two fingers in the time-honoured style of schoolboys behind teacher's backs. "But...fuck em!" Indeed.

Before being flattened by British bombers and split by the wall, the Potsdamer Platz was Berlin's city centre. Today's half built, hi-tech mecca is prospering, but the lack of nearby nightlife leaves the band with little choice but to retire to the plush confines of the Hyatt Hotel. This is not necessarily a problem. The hotel's Whiskey Bar, where the band relax with their tour manager Sara Lord (daughter of Deep Purple keyboardist Jon Lord) boasts 120 different malts. A cocktail jazz pianist tinkles. Tonight could well be a long one, "Oh, I never meant to beat you at scrabble" Hipgrave croons to a well known Coldplay song.

Increasing attacks of paranoia mean that Hipgrave now prefers booze to the weed he has smoked most of his adult life. "Maybe I will start smoking again, though" he ponders. "It might stop me drinking so much." Toploader spiritually formed the day he and Washbourn met, aged 16, at Eastbourne station before repairing to a mutual friends shed to take mushrooms. "He thought his head was bleeding all night" Hipgrave smirks, nostalgically. "And I thought I needed a piss every 10 seconds."

Their dope drenched lifestyle wasn't always conductive to smooth relationships. On occasion, Washbourn's then girlfriend would phone to hurry him along. While he took the call in the kitchen, his housemates would disconnect the phone in the lounge. "Then she'd call back shouting, Why'd you put the fucking phone down on me?" Washbourn winces. "Really full-on! And you don't want that when your caned. I'm, like, It wasn't me! But, you know. I thoroughly enjoyed myself"

Somehow the housemates found energy to form a band called Wind Bubble, featuring Washbourn on the drums. Their first gig was at The Golden Marlett, the biker pub outside of Eastbourne where later Toploader secured their vast local following. The landlord drolly billed them as Wet Fart.

Washbourn went on to play keyboards for jazzers Radio Jim, which featured the rhythm section of Knight and Green. He'd taken piano lessons from the age of eight, in emulation of a girl he had a crush on. His bricklayer father, thriving on the 80's building boom, happily granted his son's desire. "My parents must have sent shitloads on lessons" he muses gratefully. "Things have changed a bit, but during the Thatcher years, I think my dad was quid's in. He was, like, (adopts a gruff tone) Yeah, 'course you can 'ave piano lessons, son" Remembering his teacher, Washbourn becomes lost in reverie "She had really good... huge bosoms." He explains. "When I did something wrong she's be (adopts smothering tone) Oh, Joe, and lean over to play it again. So I'd spent have the time playing the piano and half the time in these huge bosoms. I used to get things wrong on purpose so i could spend more time in her bosoms. Which I think was the beginning of my rock 'n' roll story."

When Radio Jim ended, Hipgrave was drafted in to form Toploader. They took the name from Washbourn's penchant for constructing joints in such a way that the roller, who customarily gets the first toke, hog's the lions share of the contents. Despite having only previously performed Jim Morrison impressions in the shower, a perfect mimicking of Elton John saw Washbourn taking his position as the singer. When another guitarist left for college in late '96, they found somerset-born Deane, a University of Sussex graduate who had just moved to England's oldies capital from Brighton.

Relations were cemented when a homebound Deane persuaded the others to hire a car and follow him. Five Go Mad In Somerset-style exploits ensued. "Matt sorted us out with a load of pills and we went to some dodgy nightclub and decided we loved each other," Deane chuckles. As the evening develops, the Whiskey bar is soon playing host to similar besht mates-style scenes. "Taste that!" Hipgrave orders, offering his tumbler. Q swigs and affirms that the contents are very nice. "Fucking should be!" Hipgrave replies "It cost 80 Quid!"

With the pianist ending his set, Washbourn is egged on to take his place. As he shuffles towards the empty stool, the chief barman already worried that these rowdy Englishmen might be scaring off is business clientele, starts looking scared. "I don't like it" he shudders "I don't like it!" Public order is maintained, however, as a beautifully soothing instrumental version of Lionel Riche's Hello drips from Washbourn's fingers.

Back on home turf, a few weeks later, four-fifths of Toploader are drinking tea and watching the afternoon film rather than making more productive use of the hugely expensive RAK Studios in London's St John's Wood. They're waiting for Joe Washbourn to arrive. Bryan ferry is apparently elsewhere in the extensive premises, but he's seemingly not up for any ping pong.

Reconvening to record B-sides for new single Only For A While, Toploader have had a well earned break from being Toploader. During that time, however, they found it just had hard as everyone else to escape their biggest hit. On holiday in Thailand, Knight entered a guest house in Ko Pha Ngan to hear it playing on the radio. Watching TV at Gail's, Hipgrave would studiously carry on reading the paper whenever those advert came on.

Not that the song's ubiquity has taken them by surprise. From signing to Sony offshoot S2in March 1998 (an event that saw Washbourn throwing up in the toilets through a combination of hangover and nerves), they consciously planned to fill a gap in the market for welcoming feelgood pop-rock. The majority of tracks were completed with Dave Eringa at Monmouth's Rockfield Studios in October 1998, but they still needed a surefire hit.

Only in the middle of 1999 did Washbourn bring in Dancing In The Moonlight, remembered from a compilation album owned by his mother. From the moment it was finished (with producer George Drakoulias), the band knew they were on to a good thing. But were it's unashamed clap-a-long charms really Toploader's thing? "I wasn't really sure what to make of it" admits Knight. "It took me a couple of listens to get my head around it"

Dancing In The Moonlight was released in February 2000. However, thanks to sloe initial airplay and resistance from much of the media, they had to wait for regional radio support and snow-balling word-of-mouth. Only when the track was re-released did it fulfil it's Top 10 potential.

While not churlish about their opportunities their best know song has afforded, the band are understandably bursting to move onto new material. Washbourn spent the Christmas break writing in the new music room where he has hung his gold discs. "we all go into mad frenzies, start frothing at the mouth going, Do this here! o that there!" Hipgrave explains of their studio methods. "we're like a bunch of fucking wild animals."

Washbourn arrives two hours late, having woken at two in the afternoon. A power failure had allegedly silenced his alarm clock and, rousing, he immediately rang Hipgrave, bewilderedly barking. "What's going on? What are we doing?" Last night the band ended up at The Met Bar after recording an appearance on The Base. A heckler provided Washbourn with the new nickname of Sideshow Bob (Bart's gangly nemesis in The Simpsons). "I don't blame them" he reasons of his hairstyle's critics. "I look in the mirror and sometimes think, What do you fucking look like?"

Such ribbing isn't the only pitfall of fame. Washbourn is still struggling to find insurance for his new flat. On finding out he was a musician the telesales girl assisting him asked, "What, like Bon Jovi?" No, Joe mistakenly replied, although he did support them in the Summer. "So she goes, (whiny voice) You're not the one with the curly 'air are you?" he groans "She puts me on hold for 10 minutes an, when she came back, all the girls in the office were giggling. She's still laughing when she says, We can't insure you. Thanks a fucking lot!"

To the detractors, Toploader will always be The Great British Pub band that got lucky. But in a world of scrabble players, these men behaving madly are simply, contentedly doing all the things rock bands are supposed to do. Perhaps credibility will arrive when Washbourn makes good his treat to write an album of Band-influenced Americana. In the meantime, Toploader will, if it's all the same to you carry on having the time of their lives. "A lot of bands are jealous of us" Hipgrave says. "They want to be like us, but they don't want to admit to it. There's a whole world out there that you can have if your in a band, and you've got to have it. People don't want you to. They get disappointed if you don't" As we leave, Toploader are hooting with laughter about the idea of producing curly-locked Joe Washbourn dolls which, when you pull the string blasts out the refrain: "Dancing in the moonli-ght!" Now that's entertainment.