Nottingham Electro Punks Tolerance headlined the Young Blood Stage at Hard Rock Hell, even though Bassist Johnny Bondage was on cruches with a damaged ankle, and if you were at the festival you may have seen the band tearing around the festival site pushing Johnny around in a wheel chair at high speed!

They have a reputation for tearing up the stage, breaking things, and just turning up at gigs and somehow finding their way onto the bill.

Komodo Rock's Mike Elliott sat down with the band to find out more.

Mike Elliott: Right Johnny, you’re first. Tell us about the broken leg, broken ankle. Tell us what happened?

Johnny Bondage: Well it’s not a break. I can’t remember what it was. The other day we were playing The Victoria Inn in Derby. I was jumping around, smashing stuff up, creating a bit of havoc. As you do. Then I was just standing there and my leg decided that it wanted to fall off.

Zero: You had been in the crowd most of the set anyway. Bits of guitar flying all over the place.

JB: Everything had been smashed up I’d been fine and I was just standing there just a fucking normal part of the set and my leg decided to go underneath me and my knee… my fucking bone was sticking 2 inches out of my leg. Which was quite funny cos I got people to take pictures. Which was cool. (Laughing)

ME: But you are playing tonight anyway?

JB: Oh of course I am! Nothing keeps us down. We’re fucking Tolerance.

ME: So is it just wheelchair guitaring? Will you have a wheelchair on stage?

Danny B: Some sort of stool I think.

JB: No I’m just going to walk on.

Zero: It’s quite ironic cos I fell down the stairs in September and I’m not supposed to be walking either cos I fucked my leg up. The problem we’ve got is….it’s the same leg as well. We both knackered the same leg haven’t we?

ME: So you have one fit member of the band then?

DB: Just about!

ME: So are you worried about tonight then? About what is going to happen to you tonight? Cos you’re fit and healthy.

DB: Well something happens normally. Things have already happened to my leg ages ago so I’m not having it again.

ME: So you’ve been and done it already?

DB: Yeah!

ME: So you’re headlining the Youngblood stage tonight? How did that come about?

Zero: I don’t know. You tell me!

ME: Well I don’t know. If I knew I wouldn’t ask you.

Zero: I don’t know. We got asked to do this festival via someone that was previously acting as a manager for us. He decided to do a scarpering job. I honestly don’t know. I thought that Nemhain was supposed to be headlining it because we had supposed to have played with Nemhain in Prague but they couldn’t make it. So the people that we work with normally, Beyond the Grave and us play quite a bit together. I honestly don’t know though. We’ve got the headline spot and we’re proud to have it. I just hope that enough people will you know… we’re up against Vixen aren’t we so you know it’s a homerun for Vixen. I don’t know.

ME: No you’re not.

Zero: Are we not? I thought it had changed?

ME: What time you on? Ten still?

JB: We’re on at ten until eleven.

ME: You’re up against Cradle of Filth.

JB: No they finish and we start.

ME: No I have Cradle of Filth down at ten as well.

JB: I was sure that it was eleven, anyway we don't care about Cradle of Filth!

Zero: See we were told eleven then ten then eleven. We’re playing tonight anyway. If Dani hears any of this interview. Love ya Dani. I'm taller than you so. We used to have a height restriction. Well we’re headlining so that’s all that matters!

ME: So are you going to destroy the stage?

JB: Well I’d like to try and destroy as much of the stage as possible but unfortunately as the nice Mr Cramstein thank you very much for putting all the backline in. Unfortunately I can’t break that but I have got my own amp that I’ve brought with me just in case things get a bit hectic. I’ll try not to destroy the festival for the rest of the bands tomorrow.

ME: Awesome.

JB: If the crowd gets a bit bored I’ll just knock them over.

ME: So you also have a new EP that you are working on? When’s that going to be out?

Zero: We’ve actually done a video as well for the single. Basically we recorded the single before but we’re going to re-record it cos it’s not good enough in our eyes. We don’t think that it’s good enough. It was a different bass player on it. Johnny is in the band now so we’re going to put the full version of that. There’s going to be a four track EP coming out hopefully at the end of January and a video to accompany it. Which we are going to try and get on the usual channels.

ME: YouTube?

Zero: I don’t know. Why might YouTube it. To be honest I was thinking more of BBC Children. You know BBC fucking four at three in the morning! I don’t know. Wherever we can get it we will stick it wherever we can. Get fans to put it on their webpages.

ME: Awesome. So that’s January then?

Zero: January for that yeah. Really we have got to finish off this bit of the tour first. We’ve only got a few dates left but we are working first and foremost in getting Johnny Bondage better.

ME: So he can walk properly?

Zero: Yeah cos when we come back next year what we are planning on doing is two UK tours. A European tour and an American tour as well as some dates hopefully in Hong Kong. Cos we were supposed to do it this year but things got a bit knackered. My leg went at the time we were supposed to go to Hong Kong and Johnny’s leg went on this tour. We’re musical whores, we'll just go wherever.

ME: So Anti-Nowhere League then. Tell us about that?

JB: Yeah that was like. It started when we saw that Anti-Nowhere League were playing Rock City in Nottingham and we kind of half knew them anyway from an invite only gig that we had been to a few weeks before. So we though oh yeah let’s go do that gig just like cos we wanted something to do. So we went down to Rock City and, who did we walk past?

DB: Bloodhound Gang and Zebrahead I think.

JB: Yeah me and Danny just walked past them and said hi to them and everything and we’re looking for Anti-Nowhere League. I mean I don’t listen to that kind of music so I haven’t got a clue who everyone was. I didn’t know who was a roadie and who was the band so we had a look around and looked for the League and found out that the gig had been moved to a place called Stealth. So we walked down to Stealth and just went up to the sound guy and said that we are meant to be supporting the League at Rock City. Has it moved? Are we still on for that? And he just kinda shat himself a bit and didn’t know what to say so he brought us to like whoever was managing the tour or something. Said exactly the same to her and we got on the bill.

Zero: Which was pretty cool. They turned us down at first. They didn’t know who we were so we just went into their soundcheck then when they had finished we said you know who we are, can we play. And they were like. You have to call our agent. Do it properly boys. We said well we don’t do it properly we just like to fucking turn up and play.

JB: Yeah we got all our stuff in the van and drove down and their leaving us saying yeah we’ve never heard of Tolerance. They’re not playing. We had to go up and sort of schmoozed them up a bit. It was all good. They realised who we were. Then we did a blinding set so…

ME: Awesome.

DB: We hung out with them after.

JB: Kicked the crowd barrier down. A pissed off security. Almost got chucked out!

Zero: That was funny, that was.

JB: And didn't pop my knee out of it so it was a pretty successful gig.

Zero: We didn’t break much either, did we?

JB: Yeah we didn’t break too much. Apart from your stool.

DB: Yeah the drum stool snapped halfway through the set so I ended up falling off the back of the stage.

ME: You’re a pretty dangerous band to be around.

Zero: Yeah. You want to get to the front later on man. You don’t want to get too close.

ME: In case someone falls on me?

Zero: Yeah we tend to be… well you’ll see.

JB: If you haven’t seen Tolerance you should come and see us. It’s a good crack. Even if you don’t like the music it’s worth watching the stage show. To be honest a lot do like the music and that’s really good for us.

ME: Ok. You’re Johnny Bondage? So are you related to Beki Bondage?

JB: Erm…. Kind of. She’s my adoptive mother. We’ve already decided this. I got my stage name a couple of years ago after the X-Ray Specs sang Oh Bondage, Up Yours, before I had heard of Vice Squad. Then I found out, cos my best mate is best mates with her if you know what I mean. My best mate is a guy called Mark he owns Insomnia magazine. He told me to come down to this gig cos there is this woman called Beki Bondage and I was like yeah I’ll come down. So I went down to see them and they are favourite band today. And I get on really well with her.

ME: Yeah she’s really cool.

JB: Going up to London with Mark in January as well so…

Zero: We played with him a couple of days ago actually.

ME: Yeah she sang with Girlschool at the Girlschool tribute show in London. She did one song with them. She came out on stage.

JB: And she’s my adoptive mother.

Zero: I bet your really mother doesn’t know that!

A big thank you to Tolerance for sitting down and talking with us.

You can check out photos from the bands set at Hard Rock Hell here .

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