Dolly Rockers Interview

Brooke Challinor,

Lucie Kay

Sophie King

The Dolly Rockers first came to the attention of the general public, especially with the cover of “Round Round” by the Sugababes, in X Factor. We’ve managed to get the brief interview at Zanzibar in Leicester, and we were looking forward to it. The girls have come a long way that’s for sure, and their new single Gold Digger has been getting some serious airplay on various national radio stations.

They’ve been lauded as “bright and brash, cheeky but charming and just a little bit rude but all the better for it” and even “gobby and bolshy rather than polished and glossy”, and given some of the stories we’ve heard of them deleting photographers pictures from their own cameras, we weren’t totally sure what to expect. And what a pleasant surprise. Candid honesty, and a down to earth no messing attitude are what greets us from Brooke, Lucie and Sophie.

Abz: Could you tell us a bit how you started out and got together?

Lucie: We basically went to an audition that appeared in a stage newspaper about 4 years ago, and it was for a girl band, but we were put together by quite a young guy himself, and he basically just wanted to start out in the music industry as a manager, starting out with a girl band. We stayed with him for 3 months, mainly because we weren’t doing our own songs, they were all covers. We then went onto X Factor and got quite far, through to the last 8, and we’d never really done a proper gig, plus we were really young, 17, and then from X Factor somebody introduced us to Ray Hedges and then he eventually co-wrote all of our album with us. So one thing led to another and then we got signed in January to EMI.

Brooke: It’s been a long process! But we’re getting there!

Abz: When you all met was there an instant good chemistry between you?

Sophie: Well, we all got thrown in together, we all went to an audition, and within a week Brooke moved down into my house

Brooke: We all noticed each other straight away because we’re all “big” personalities, and have similar styles, which of course at first we may have seen each other as a threat, but then literally moved down when I was 17 and we got on great. Sophie was saying to me that I could stay with her in the spare room, and we’d only met at one audition, so I turned up at her house with like 4 suitcases haha.

Sophie: Yes, I said it in passing conversation, you know, “if you need somewhere to stay I’ve got a spare room”, being polite, and the next minute she’s at my door with her grandma and mum all sort of saying “bye Brooke”, and just left her there.

Brooke: Just left me on poor Sophie!

Lucie: We’ve all got the same sense of humour as well. I think that’s been pretty important, that’s why we’re so funny.

James: So there are always jokes, possibly pranks being played on each other?

Lucie, Brooke and Sophie: YES!!

James: Like?

Lucie: Brooke always does horrible tricks to me (Brooke pulls a face).

Sophie: Yeah Brooke told some journalist that Lucie was 28.

Lucie: WHAT!? Did she actually do that!?

Sophie: We did tell Lucie we did that! Honest!

Abz: Can you tell us a bit about how you go about writing songs?

Brooke: Well for us it’s literally like writing poems. When we first started out we never sat down pretending to be serious songwriters because honestly we’re far from that, but we were lucky enough in that the people we work with, they want things to come from us. So instead of telling us what to do, they gave us an opportunity to have an input. We can’t write melodies at the moment, but because we’re involved with the process we’re starting to get a better ear for it, which wouldn’t have happened if we had just been given everything all of the time. So, we write the lyrics, and of course that means we believe in what we’re singing. And that comes across better on stage I think, it’s come from us.

Sophie: When we go to our recording studio, they play us like loads of different melodies, loads of backing tracks, and we choose what we want. When we’ve got what we want, we put the lyrics to that. So it’s not like we get there and everything is done.

At this point they have to go on stage to perform two songs and we think the interview is over, and to be honest we’re a bit disappointed because it has been genuinely fun talking to them, but in one of those “Did they just say that moments” they offer to continue the interview after their small set. With exception of “Alter Bridge”, so far in the Jitty’s history, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a group make an offer like that, and well, it has been great fun so we agree to it without hesitation, but first we have to witness their set.

In all honesty it wasn’t bad at all, and given that they had only learnt one of the songs a very short while ago, and that the stage was starting to resemble the overflow from a Fairy liquid, how they managed to stay upright on their high heels is nothing short of a miracle. Interestingly, after the set, the girls were little a unnerved by the experience and in one of the many music industry incidents voiced their concerns, only to be labeled divas. Now if they had been divers that might have been more useful given the amount of water that was on stage, but we thought they handled themselves very well indeed!

The last word on this I think I should go to the Dolly Rockers, from their Twitter of the night: “Had a big fight with egg head sound man at gig, what a doosh. Think he may need anger management or a rod up the a….”

So, carrying on!

Abz: How would you describe your music?

Brooke: Cocky Pop!

Sophie: We say “Cocky Pop”, or “Wonky Pop”, fun catchy tunes.

Lucie: With interesting lyrics

Sophie: Yes, we write lyrics about what we do, and about things that interest us.

Abz: One of your videos was shot in and around the London Underground, what were the reactions of the people passing by.

Lucie: A bit shocked and a bit scared!

Brooke: Quite a mixed reaction

Lucie: Yes

Brooke: The first one we did, the viral one before we were signed.

Lucie: Yeah I think that’s the one she means.

Brooke: Yeah the “Je Suis Une Dolly”, we went into the Tate Modern, definitely got thrown out of there!

Lucie: Yeah

Brooke: But they thought we were an art exhibition first because we had on the headphones so wee could hear the music and of course they couldn’t.

Sophie: So it wasn’t music out loud or anything.

Brooke: So we were just miming, and there was this little old lady and she got well into it, she loved it, and I grabbed her hand starting to dance with her and she was like this (smiles and dances in her chair). She was lovely.

Sophie: For the sake of the film the producers were like “Right, you now have to get everyones attention”, so we had walk down the platform of the train station just screaming to get their attention, to make people look at us and we could then capture their reactions, so we just looked crazy.

Brooke: Yeah we did actually look crazy.

Sophie: Yes, and on the tube when we did the routine, baring in mind no one else could hear the music, only we can...

Brooke: And every time the train stopped I fell.

Sophie: So when the song stopped we had to sit down next to the people we had just been dancing in front of, and then get up again, crazy.

James: How did you feel doing that?

Brooke: Well, we’d do it anyway. We’d had so much Red Bull, and we’d traveled back from a gig the night before, getting literally only 4 hours sleep, and all this Red Bull to wake us up, we were pretty wide eyed!

Lucie: We do stuff like that every day, like every day we egg each other on.

Sophie: We dance on the platform of the train, so when it come sin it blows our hair everywhere.

Abz: Would you do it again?

Sophie: Yeah

Lucie: We did

Brooke: Yes, we did for our first music video, Gold Digger.

Sophie: Yes, we did a remake of that but because it was on Youtube we couldn’t use a lot of the scenes.

Brooke: Yes it’s illegal to film in these places you know, you get told.

Sophie: In Liverpool Street Station you have to pay a fee, like thousands of pounds.

James: Ah yes, Vagabond did something similar, they’d just done a gig, and then decided to play in an underground station, and literally got chased the next time they tried.

Brooke laughs

Sophie: We did loads for our new single, because we have a budget now, so we wanted bigger and better but the same sort of thing to introduce ourselves. We did it, but of course a lot of the things you can’t use because we didn’t get permission, so it’s basic. There were loads of bits we could have added on from Youtube, or other footage.

Abz: You’ve been likened to the Spice Girls and Banarama, how does that make you feel?

Lucie: Everybody has said Banarama, and we actually did an interview with them 2 weeks ago for the Guardian.

Sophie: They were amazing.

Brooke: Yes it’s online.

Lucie: Obviously we didn’t grow up with that, I mean we know who they are, obviously they’re famous icons, but it was really interesting to meet them and kind of get their opinion on everything, they were saying how, they thought we’d so much more suited to the 80’s because everything was so much more “mad” back then. In a way they felt a bit sorry for us because all the bands are a bit tame these days.

Brooke: Yeah, they actually said to us, which is like for me, one of the best comments I’ve had in this band because even when you get signed by a record company you hear allsorts, but they actually said, “You remind us of us when we were younger in Banarama”, and that’s such a huge deal because they are 80’s icons. For them to say that to us, it’s incredible, but if a paper / journalist were to say that, then yes that would be nice, but it doesn’t have the same, it was just unbelievable.

Sophie: Yeah when we were speaking about how we make our outfits and records, and how we go into record companies and “steal things” like cd’s and stuff, we don’t know their story, but they said “that sounds just like us”. They even said that when they met us they thought we were going to be manufactured, and then when they had actually met us they said that we were the only band that they could see themselves in.

Brooke: And afterwards we went out, and they got well drunk haha.

Abz: I heard your aim was to bring back Top of the Pops, so who would you have on it?

Lucie: No, we’ve always said we would want to host it, but who would we have..mmm

Brooke: Everything in the charts.

Sophie: But it would need to be a mix, it would be pop, R n B, Rock, Indie, it would have to be a bit of everything.

Lucie: A lot of fit boys! And once a week you could bring back an old band.

The Dolly Rockers Myspace page can be found here:

www.myspace.com/thedollyrockers

We'd like to thank the Dolly Rockers for their time, and Warren, Holly and Jenn at Chuff.