The Retakes Biography
The Retakes Biography
Well this is the story of how The Retakes came to be as i remember everything.Me(John Hall) and Jonah Hardy have been playing in bands together for a long time until the singer at the time, John-Luke Field decided to quit saying the band weren’t playing the type of music he wanted to do. Me, Jonah and our then drummer Ollie Pitham went on search for somebody who would want to join the band. This wasn’t particularly easy, as most people in school didn’t want to play the old school garage punk that Ersine, as we were then called, were playing. After searching for ages, an old friend of Jonah’s from school called Ashton Burgess was rumoured to be looking to join a band, after the one he was playing in had decided to turn their career down the more metal path. When asked to join the band in September 2001, Ashton jumped at the chance. At his first practice all of us were really impressed with Ashton and we made their first performance with Ashton at The school Band Night.
By June 2002 we were almost splitting up just after recording our very first demo tape, containing early versions of Going Down, Plant, Mary-Jane and Westmoreland. Ollie had been showing a total lack of passion and commitment to the band, often just not turning up at practices because he forgot. Eventually after failing to turn up to any practices for over a month we decided he had to be kicked out or we'd never get anywhere. This all happened shortly after we performed a great cover of The Kinks classic “Your Really Got Me” at a Summer Concert. Ashton who had just bought a drum kit as a hobby outside of the band said he wouldn’t mind drumming and singing. On the very same day Ollie was kicked out the band, we had our first practice as a three piece. More songs were played that practice than had ever been played in the almost two and a half years Ollie had been with us. Everybody agreed, including Jonah’s mother that Ashton showed a complete natural talent for playing the drums.
After a while and some of the best practices they'd ever had, the band changed their name to The Retakes. The name came about after i thought I’d heard Milo from the Descendents call the crowd a “bunch of retakes” on a live Descendents C.D. (He really calls the crowd a “bunch of mistakes”) Shortly after the name change a double irony came from the name when we realised every member of the band was retaking a subject at school. (Me and Jonah were retaking Maths and Ashton I.T)
As productive as the practice sessions were it was obvious the Drummer/Vocalist approach was never going to work on stage, as the majority of the audience wouldn’t even be able to see Ashton who was hidden behind a mass of cymbals. It wasn’t long before we went in search of a permanent front man.
After not much searching Ashton suggested his friend he had known since he was a kid called Aaron. Aaron had been wanting to play the guitar as long as Ashton had, but he never joined a band. Ashton knew Aaron wanted to join The Retakes and they began practising together until Aaron could sing and play the guitar at the same time. Aaron was tried out for the band on Friday 13th September 2002 almost a year to the day of Ashton joining us and confirmed the final line-up of the band.
For over a year me and Jonah had been busy writing a huge amount of songs easily enough for a debut album. These songs basically tell how we both feel and felt growing up. Each song is a crafted tale from the suburbs in which the simplicity of our music juxtaposes the detail we try to go to, to describe our true feelings. We write love songs as well as tales of boredom, anger, frustration and alienation, all of which are true stories about our lives. The songs are currently still being rehearsed and restructured ready for a recording session sometime in the future.
We count our major influences as The Clash, The Sex Pistols, The Jam, Stiff Little Fingers, The Who, Green Day, The Kinks, The Offspring, Weezer and The Buzzcocks.
The Retakes Vocals/Guitar- Aaron Jones Bass- Jonah Hardy Guitar- John Hall Drums/Vocals- Ashton 'Sweaty' Burgess Other Places to go:
