The first taste of maximum rock ’n’ roll duo His Lordship’s new Chuck Berry covers album, Promised Land has been unveiled today. The pair – vocalist/guitarist James Walbourne and drummer Kris Sonne – have unleashed their incendiary take on Berry’s classic Nadine.
Recently, we spoke to James at length about his infatuation with Berry, which started at a young age. In fact, six-year-old Walbourne was lucky enough to see Chuck himself play at London’s Hammersmith Odeon.
“I remember waking up in the morning and thinking, ‘Oh my God – it’s eight hours before we see Chuck Berry!’”, Walbourne told us. “I remember there were Teddy Boys there and an underlying air of violence about the place – it was very different to what it would be like now.”
James was a rock ’n’ roll obsessive as a kid. “That was my thing: Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis… I was enamoured with it and it just consumed me – that was the start of me being involved in music. I used to watch videos of those guys over and over at home, and I was fortunate that my dad took me to see some of those people that were alive in the ‘80s. I think the first gig I saw was Fats Domino at the Royal Festival Hall.”
For new album, Promised Land – which has been made to mark what would have been Berry’s 100th birthday – Walbourne and Sonne have taken on 13 Chuck Berry classics. These aren’t just straight covers though, instead the pair have reworked the songs into entirely new forms…
“I came back to England, and we realised it was his 100th birthday [this year], so we thought, ‘Why not? It’d be a great thing to do to honour Chuck.’” James told us. “We’ve got our own studio, [Karma Studios, London], so we thought we’d just do it. There wasn’t much thinking about it – we had the means to do it, so we did it, and the Berry family seemed into it; that was part of it. But we did f*** around with the songs quite a lot!”
Although a fun project, it wasn’t without its challenges. “We went around the houses a bit to try and reimagine the songs. It was like, ‘How would Kraftwerk do Chuck Berry? OK – that sounds pretty good; let’s do that’. I’d go away and do a demo at home and then come in and play it to the boys, and then we’d go in and record it.”
The video of the first taste of the record, a snarling, garage-rock take on Nadine, has just dropped on YouTube, and will hit streaming services tomorrow (October 30) alongside a 7-inch release. The album itself arrives on November 13.
We asked James why the band chose to come at the song in a particularly hi-octane way…
“It’s very straight-ahead garage rock. I think Nadine would’ve influenced all those Chiswick Records bands. I grew up playing in pubs all over London – that’s how I learnt the craft of playing in a band, and Nadine was one of those songs that everyone played. It was a massive song – the Wonderwall of pub rock!”
As to what Walbourne thinks Berry himself would make of his take on Nadine, and the album as a whole, James is unsure…
“He’d either love it or hate it. We didn’t want to play it safe, so I think Chuck would possibly get off on that.”
