Duncan Reid & The Big Heads say Don't Blame Yourself as they prepare for their Portsmouth debut

Duncan Reid, or Kid Reid as he was then known, was bassist in The Boys – one of the original crop of ’70s punk acts, moving in the same circles as members of The Clash, The Sex Pistols and Generation X.

While hailed as hugely influential – they were Joey Ramone’s favourite band – they never quite broke through on the commercial front.

The Boys split up in 1982 and for many years Duncan pursued a career away from music.

Duncan picks up the story: ‘There were loads of offers coming in for The Boys to reform but there were two of us saying: “No, it was a good time, but it’s in the past.”

‘And then Thee Michelle Gun Elephant covered a couple of our songs and had a hit in Japan, so we had an offer to play out there. I thought: “Ooh, I’ve never been to Japan before...”

‘So we went and had such a good time that we started playing again, and without Thee Michelle Gun Elephant The Boys would have not got back together, and without The Boys getting back together, I would never have had this amazing career with The Big Heads, so it’s all down to Thee Michelle Gun Elephant!’

Duncan left the reformed Boys to go his own way and formed The Big Heads in 2012, playing what he’s dubbed ‘heavy melody power pop.’

And now on the brink of releasing their fourth album, Don’t Blame Yourself, they’re about to play in Portsmouth for the first time.

The day before Duncan spoke with The Guide, they’d sent the album’s masters off to the manufacturer. While the album is sadly not going to be ready for the date here, they plan to play several new songs in the set.

For the first time with this album they followed the crowdfunding route – and they had a lucky escape on that front. Duncan submitted the project to crowdfunding platform Pledgemusic, which up to that point had helped hundreds of bands raise the money needed for their projects. But the wheels were about to fall off of Pledgemusic in dramatic fashion.

‘A couple of days after I submitted it to Pledge, someone said, “Oh, you should look at these comments going online”. And I looked at them and they were comments about musicians not getting paid, so I pulled it.’

After months of uncertainty, the website eventually declared bankruptcy leaving numerous bands and their fans massively out of pocket.

Instead, the band decided to run the crowdfunding through their own website to great success.

‘We would have been in a little bit of do-do had we done it and they hadn’t coughed up the money. To lose all of that crowdfunding would have been devastating. It actually turned out very well.’

With Duncan satisfied creatively with The Big Heads, he sees no need to go back to The Boys – who still play live and last released an album in 2014. And their relationships have thawed too.

‘It was rocky for a few years, but bands are funny old things, they’re like dysfunctional families, and everybody's all good now.

‘There's a song that I wrote for this album that hasn’t actually got onto the album, but it will be a B-side or something, and it's got the line: “I don't know where I'd be today without some fisticuffs along the way”.

‘It was sort of looking back, and things that seem like they're the end of the world at the time, are actually the beginning of a whole new chapter and lead on to something that is just a blessing, really.

‘If I hadn’t left, I would never have released the four albums that we have and would never have had such a fulfilling time.

‘I would have had a very good time playing with The Boys all around the world, and playing those old songs, but I would never have been pushed to do something completely new that is so fulfilling for me.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​’

Among those adventures, Duncan has joined an elite club of musicians which only includes him, Elton John and Paul McCartney – he has been given the keys to Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay.

This came about after he released a singled named Montevideo from his first solo album, Little Big Head, so the powers that be decided to honour him.

‘Montevideo in Uruguay is a little bit like Geneva in Switzerland – it's a very quiet place and every day seems like a Sunday afternoon.

‘But there's this one place called The Clash City Rockers Bar, it’s one of those places where when you open the door, the noise blast you backwards. I've had a few good nights in there and time seems to do a funny old thing, you might look at your watch and it’s midnight, then you look at it five minutes later and it's five in the morning.

‘And it was after one of those nights I had to go to the parliament and pick up my medal without any sleep – and I was still quite merry. Then I had to do my speech in Spanish, which was interesting...’

DUNCAN REID & THE BIG HEADS

The Barn, Milton

Saturday, February 29

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