It’s somewhat of a truism that those drawn to Cambodia have to have a bit of a story, a bit of character – the bland are not attracted. This is very much the case with Steve Murray, an English musician who had been close to being signed to a major label as a 20 year old coming out of the Manchester punk-pop scene. Initially he visited this country while backpacking around the world with a friend while he recovered from the shock of the death of his 19 year old daughter, Georgia, during heart surgery. He’s now been in and out of Cambodia for the last ten years. “I’m here because of losing my daughter, because of my charity work, and I also enjoy getting involved in the music scene as well.” He plays this Friday at Oscar’s on the Corner with the Stiff Little Punks, and he sat down in the rain to talk to Leng Pleng about where he’s going and where he’s been.
“I first passed through Phnom Penh in 2011, and started coming regularly from the following year, doing two or three months a year. Cambodia is a place that really pulled me in, spiritually. Going to The Killing Fields gave me a real appreciation of life and death – having experienced that myself only a few months earlier, finding myself in a country where almost everybody had experienced that loss of family. I felt very connected.”
By February 2012 the first project by Georgia’s Children of the World was up and running, and the first major fundraising effort was in June of that year. “Basically what I do is find existing small underfunded grassroots organisations to work with. What I’m good at, being a musician, is putting on events, so in my home town I started G Festival, named after Georgia. We started small, like a village fete, and eventually it became quite a decent sized, 25,000 people kind of festival. The first one we did was 4 June 2012, on the Queen’s Birthday bank holiday, which was Georgia’s 21st birthday.”
There’s an interesting human synergy between working with a small town in the Manchester area and small villages in Cambodia. “I come from quite a small community, and it’s very much that community that has supported these tiny things out here in Cambodia. When I’m promoting the events I let people know – this is your event, see how much you’ve made the difference by getting involved. I do it in Georgia’s name, but I try to impress on people that it’s not just about Georgia, it’s in the name of everybody who’s lost someone.”
And what is the focus of the work in Cambodia? “Everyone has a different idea of charity, and education is a big one for me, but also clean water. We try to cover water, healthcare, education and nutrition. We’ve done a lot of good work in Kandal Province, and Siem Reap, where we work with two very, very small underfunded charities.”
“The best project we got involved in is building a full-on school up in Preah Vihear. We got involved at absolute grassroots level, starting small. It’s now a thriving community – we built three buildings on the site, with five classrooms in total, we put a freshwater well, and another donor has come along and built two further classrooms for a secondary school. They had nothing and now have a full education facility with a water supply.
“It’s been quite a journey. Georgia always guides me – the motto of the organisation is Driven By Love, Guided By Angels – I’ve just followed that guidance right the way through.”
As for music, Steve first got really turned on when The Sex Pistols appeared. “I first heard Anarchy in the UK in December 1976 on a little tiny transistor radio. I remember the moment, it was life-changing. This song just came blasting out: what is that? We’d had Bowie and Bolan when I was younger, but that had kind of slipped away, and there was a gap. I was never into the Deep Purples and the Black Sabbaths and the Pink Floyds, just couldn’t get it. I tried to get the kids at school to make a punk band, but they didn’t get it like I got it.”
Undeterred, he pushed on and things began to happen. “I got into a band in 1977, and started writing with a guy – the leader of that band eventually became the bass player in The Fall, he left and took the other two guys with him. So I talked to the guys from school again, and by this time punk/new wave had caught hold, and become a little bit more mainstream in its style. By very late 77 we got a band together – The Fast Cars – and started playing gigs. I was the singer – not a particularly good singer, more of a shouter and pointer I used to call it. By the end of 78 we were playing decent sized venues, as 16 and 17 year olds – on bills with Joy Division and The Buzzcocks, who we also were sharing rehearsal rooms with. Great times, the scene was electric. And we were going to watch all the other bands as well – The Clash, The Jam, The Ramones and all that.
“We had a residency in the local pub, The Butchers Arms, and it was getting busier and busier, and a little bit crazy, things getting broken and people falling over, and we eventually got banned. So we wrote a song and in 79 we had a single, The Kids Just Want To Dance. One of the lines in the song is: We got banned from The Butchers Arms. It did all right on the alternative chart.
“Years later, about 20 years ago, when we were putting a website together, we realised that the song had actually gone all around the world – we had no idea. Within weeks of the website going live we got an invitation to go to play in Tokyo, Japan. Apparently we were known as the Kings of Power Pop! We went to Japan, it was fantastic, and we were signed by a small local label, who put our first album out again 20 odd years later. And we’re still doing it to this day.
“The Kids Just Want To Dance has been covered by lots of little bands in Japan, it’s madness. The most famous cover was through Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day – his son Joey has a young punk band [SWMRS, formerly known as Emily’s Army]. Billie Joe said, ‘If you want to be a punk pop band, go back to the roots like I did, and this is one of the best songs of the time.’ So they covered it on their album, and then we actually supported them when they came and toured in the UK.”
Why do you think these songs still talk to the upcoming generations? “The whole movement has endured. The raw energy of guitar, bass and drums, and teenage lyrics. When you’re a teenager is your first time experiences of everything. The first Arctic Monkeys album is lyrically incredible – I can still relate to every single word of it, your inner teenager doesn’t change.
So after the single, the courtship of a major label. “We got to play with lots of key bands, like The Jam. We were very close to signing with Polydor, but we didn’t quite make it. Just a couple of years ago we got hold of the master tapes of some demos we made with them, we did a limited release mini-album. Sold out 500 copies in a couple of months.”
After not getting signed the implosion came very, very quickly. “It was 1980, and I was only 20. The scene was changing, we weren’t really following a particular trend anymore, and getting a little lost. The very last song we wrote as Fast Cars at the time was called Every Day I Make Another Mistake, about the whole thing crashing down. We were offered a possible tour of Japan then that didn’t come off, which inspired a lyric: We were going to be so big in Japan, and then we’d conquer the world. 22 years later we were in Japan singing that in front of the kids. Self prophetic? Or just pathetic. I’m not sure,” he laughs.
After the first run as The Fast Cars followed a couple of years of bubbling under, working with many musicians who went on to get the big break – such as The Mighty Wah, Swing Out Sister. “But then I got married and calmed down a bit.”
The Fast Cars continue to play with a new line up and a slightly changed sound, and Steve also as a new project called Kingbird that has more of a country rock feel. “I’ve got my punk rock roots, but in later days it’s more rock’n’roll. The punk started up when I was 17. This year with the original band we’ll still do five or six gigs, mostly by invitation at little festivals and punk nights. We can draw a decent crowds overseas. These days the four main influences of rock songs for me are The Rolling Stones, The Faces, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan. I’m not saying I’m anywhere near as good as that, but if you understand the way they put songs together – basic chords, and the cleverness comes in the arrangements rather than the chord structures. I love doing that. I think of myself as a songwriter, because I’m not a particularly good singer, I’m not a particularly good guitar player. I’m a good performer – I can communicate, I can wave my arms and entertain. As I say: I’ve written loads of hits, I’ve just never had any.”
In Phnom Penh, find Steve Murray playing some of the hits he has written at Oscar’s on the Corner on Friday night with Stiff Little Punks, or sneaking around the odd open mic. He’s not here for long this time but will be back again soon.