Jonny Cola & Heidi Heelz

Music-News readers may recall that a while ago, I reviewed Jonny Cola’s excellent double-A side single. Last year, he got diagnosed with end-stage kidney failure but thanks to the special lady in his life, Jonny’s career is now up and running again.

Music-News Claudia A. pinned down Jonny and his leading lady, the talented Heidi Heelz, for an interview.

JONNY interview

Music-News:
Jonny, last year you were diagnosed with end-stage kidney failure. Surely that’s devastating news for anyone, but even more so for a rock musician. What was your initial reaction?

Jonny Cola:
Yeah, it wasn’t one of the best days of my life, put it that way! I went from playing a sold-out gig supporting David Devant & His Spirit Wife on the Wednesday night to being phoned by my GP on the Thursday afternoon and told to go to A&E, then being informed on Friday morning that I had only 10% kidney function. Devastating is the word really, and I did initially think that it was going to be the end of everything. When you read about things like dialysis for the first time, it’s just overwhelming - I couldn’t imagine being able to live any kind of life. Of course, in the end, you just get on with things and take each day as it comes.

MN:
Following the news, what was the band’s reaction?


The boys were incredibly supportive. They all came to visit me in hospital on the day I got diagnosed. Well, we were supposed to be on a mini-tour in the Midlands that weekend, so it wasn’t like they had anything else to do. I think at that point it must have all seemed pretty bleak, but all I can really remember is passing grapes round and trying to get everyone to have a good time. Over the following months, we had to slow everything right down, but nobody ever complained, nobody quit. I consider myself very lucky to have the band mates that I do.

MN:
You are the luckiest guy in the world in such that your fiancée, Heidi, offered to be the donor for your life-saving organ transplant – and your body accepted. So when things were on the up again after the op, were you in any doubt that you would/should continue with music and the band, or were you contemplating to quit the biz and live the quiet life?

JC:
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it, because something like this does make you reevaluate your entire life. Being in a band in the 2010’s can feel like quite a slog at times and, with a bit of distance, it can look like a lot of investment of time and money for pretty limited rewards. But it only takes one gig, one good rehearsal, one new song idea and any thought that you could ever stop goes flying out of the window pretty damn quickly. Besides, Mauro would never let me quit - and, for that matter, neither would Heidi. And the luckiest guy in the world? Yeah, you might just be right.

MN:
I take it that before the diagnosis, you held up a rock n roll life lifestyle, because every rocker does. I also take it that after the diagnosis and kidney transplant, that lifestyle came to a halt. You decided to carry on nonetheless, so how does the new situation affect your daily routine, and of course your routine as the frontman of a band?

JC:
When I was first diagnosed, everything did come to an abrupt halt - I quit drinking, smoking and anything else along those lines overnight, primarily because I wanted to try and preserve what little kidney function I had for as long as possible, in the hope of getting to a transplant before I needed dialysis. As it happened, the function continued to drop off steeply anyway and I spent five months on dialysis. So, as it wasn’t making any difference, I un-quit the booze again because hey, if you have to spend 15 hours a week in hospital, you may as well have a bloody drink.
As for now, while I haven’t reverted entirely to my previous hedonism, there’s no specific need for me to live a particularly austere life - you have to balance these things up. I just make sure I have plenty of water too. Water solves pretty much everything.

MN:
Did your family try to stop you from carrying on as a musician?

JC:
Ha! No, they know better than to try.

MN:
You (that is Jonny Cola and The A-Grades), recently released a double A-Side single, and two exquisite videos to go with the songs (‘Straight To Video’ and ‘Marlborough Road’). What was the visual inspiration behind the songs, in particular ‘Straight To Video’?

JC:
I always associate Straight To Video with the Elephant & Castle, the brutal visual excitement of the place, where scale seems out of control somehow. I’d recently moved down the road from there when I wrote the song, at a time when things in my life felt quite out of control anyway, so I guess I was trying to capture all this in a song (and obviously only a three-part epic would do the job). The video is primarily the work of three of us - me, Jez and Heidi - so it’s more of a response to the finished track. It takes certain cues from Querelle and The Ring, as people have spotted, but there’s a lot more in there too.
‘Marlborough Road’ was inspired by events when I lived there a number of years ago, but also the road itself, which always felt darker than it should do, despite the street lighting. For the vid, on top of filming it at night (which just felt obvious), we tried to capture the sense of enclosure of the lyrics by shooting most of it in small spaces. Finally, the north-south journey was supposed to link the two tracks geographically, though that was probably really just for my benefit. Believe it or not, I like things to make sense, even if they only make sense to me!

MN:
David Ryder Prangley (of Rachel Stamp) produced the lot. Is he more of a friend, or a creative collaborator, or both?

JC:
Basically, David expressed an interest in doing a couple of tracks with us, and we jumped at the chance! We’d had ‘Marlborough Road’ kicking around for a while and kept trying to find the right arrangement for it, but it wasn’t until David came along to some rehearsals, changed the feel of the verses, chopped a bit out, added another bit and then made us play the whole thing way faster than we thought we could (poor Marco!) that it suddenly clicked. We see him out and about a lot actually.

MN:
I love the way you and the band present themselves (and also in the videos), it’s almost like a homage to the good old days of cabaret and glam rock. Do you think that within the contemporary music scene, most current bands lack a certain visual identity and stage charisma?

JC:
Yes, but I think that’s a product of contemporary culture rather than individuals. There’s nothing charismatic about an MP3.

MN:
Speaking of contemporary, which other bands/solo artists do you hold in high esteem? And which of the ‘old’ masters are your heroes and heroines?

JC:
I saw Cyanide Pills the other week - at a night put on by Mauro and Simon - and realized I remembered half the songs from the only other time I’d seen them, about nine months before. So I promptly bought both the albums and they’re fucking fantastic. Who else? Well, there are a handful of glammy powerpop bands out in California at the moment - Warm Soda and Big Tits spring to mind - and there’s this band called The Priscillas that you should definitely check out. Their new bassist is well fit.
I don’t really do heroes, but I did get very excited when I met Andy Bell (the Erasure one, not the Ride/Oasis one). Tequila was involved.

MN:
If I’m informed correctly, you guys are working on an album at the moment. How’s that going?

JC:
Really well! The tracks are nearly ready - in fact, Jez is probably slaving over a hot mixing desk as we speak. We’ve always been self-funding, paying for everything by working full-time jobs alongside all the music, but we reached a point where we needed to find a way to raise some money to be able to do the album justice. So we set up a PledgeMusic campaign a few days ago and, much to our shock and amazement, hit our target within four hours of launching! This means that we can do the vinyl format that we were so desperate to do, and it means we can afford to make another video too. We’re now up to 150% and, for every bit extra that we can raise, we’ll be able to push the release more and keep making music and videos with the same level of ambition. If anyone fancies pledging, head over to http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/a-grades2013, where there are all manner of delights available, such as deluxe editions, test pressings, private gigs, the infamous A-Grades Big Night Out Kit and a naked calendar of, well, me... The album’s out in September, by the way.

MN:
Will you write/include a song that (directly or indirectly) refers to a woman who instead of giving her heart gave her kidney? And it could be turned into an animated video, directed by the likes of Tim Burton…

JC:
I might lift that exact line for the lyrics - “I gave you my heart and said, baby, stay with me / But you raised the stakes when you gave me your kidney” etc. Now where did I put Tim’s number...

HEIDI interview

Music-News:
Heidi, you are Jonny’s fiancée… so I don’t wish to ask the obvious regarding Jonny’s kidney failure diagnosis. What I would like to know is how long after his diagnosis did it take you to make the decision to sacrifice one of your own kidneys, and how would you have reacted if his body rejected your organ?

Heidi Heelz:
When the doctor told us that Jonny would need a transplant I followed her out of the room and offered to donate straight away, to which she replied, “Blimey, that was quick!” It obviously would have been a tragedy if Jonny’s body had rejected the kidney, but we’re so similar anyway that I think it feels quite at home in there.

MN:
Did anyone, for example parents, friends, or even Jonny, try to talk you out of it?

HH:
When I told my Mum that I was going to donate Jonny a kidney, her immediate reaction was to offer to donate in my place, but of course it’s not that simple! Jonny did try and talk me out of it at first, but I never listen to him anyway (joke!).

MN:
Jonny has now a transplant kidney, and as a result you are left with only one kidney, too. He obviously needs to live a life involving certain restrictions, but is your life restricted as well, in terms of maintaining health I mean?

HH:
I’ve had to calm down a little, but speaking as a former gold medalist in the Partying Olympics, I think it’s probably rather provident that I have to take things a bit easier these days - I don’t want to be dead by 40!

MN:
How long did it take to recover from the operation?

HH:
In a sense I’m still recovering - I have yet to regain my full stamina and energy levels, and I’m still pretty unfit after having to stay in bed for so long. On the upside my pain threshold has increased tenfold - I was able to come off the heavy analgesics pretty quickly, meaning that we’ve now got a cupboard full of ‘em saved for a rainy day.

MN:
Heidi Heelz… Jonny Cola… what’s with the names?

HH:
I was a burlesque performer before I started playing in bands and DJ-ing, and Heidi Heelz was my stage name. As I was already known by that moniker in my then-hometown of Brighton it seemed logical to use it for the music stuff too. As for Cola, you better ask him...

MN:
You are a DJ, and a club promoter. When did you get into all that, and how did you get involved with Jonny and his band?

HH:
I’ve been DJ-ing and promoting for about twelve years now, and playing bass for eleven. In that time I’ve run a hell of a lot of nights, most notably Dice Club and Glamracket, and it was at the latter where I first met Jonny after booking the A-Grades to play. This was especially strange, as we subsequently realized we have a whole bunch of mutual friends, have played lots of the same clubs, and have even been at the same gigs a few times. We have a theory about our paths not crossing earlier, but it involves cloaking devices so I’m not going to tell you about it.

MN:
What’s currently spinning on your turntable, any particular tracks that are favorites? Also, which club DJs inspire you – past and present?

HH:
At the moment I’m only running retro nights so I spend a lot of time DJ-ing junkshop glam and obtuse 80s post-punk, but I love Queercore bands like Methodist Centre and Hunx & His Punx, so that’s what’s on the turntable at home.
I’ve never really had any DJ heroes, but the first club I truly loved was called Kitsch Bitch, and I guess I’ve always aspired to make my own clubs as cool as I remember that being.

MN:
What other creative projects are you involved in, if any?

HH:
I joined The Priscillas on bass in March, and totally hit the ground running - in the first month we wrote and recorded a song for a movie soundtrack (The Search For Simon) which we’ll also be releasing as our new single, and we’re currently in the middle of organizing a video shoot and tours in the UK and Spain. Meanwhile you can see us on May 31st at The 12 Bar, June 21st at Bar Solo, July 11th at The Buffalo Bar (with the A-Grades!) and July 27th at The Ship in Kennington. I also have a top-secret Bowie-related project on the backburner, am still a gun for hire graphic design-wise (the A-Grades logo is my handiwork, fact fans!) and am regularly involved in one-off, weird, fun projects, like being in a Boy George video a couple of weeks ago.

MN:
You directed the two recently released Jonny Cola videos. Was that the first time you directed a video, and can you see yourself doing this more often?

HH:
Officially yes, although I did so much work on their previous video for Halo that I ended up with a co-director credit. I love working with Jonny and Jez, and a couple of other bands have asked us to make their videos, so I’ll definitely be doing more directing in the future!

MN:
Is your career on a slower pace now because of the situation with Jonny, or does it not interfere with your own creativity?

HH:
For a while my career came to a standstill as I gave up almost all my DJ-ing and promotion to look after Jonny, but now we’re both basically well again I’m doing more exciting and diverse work than ever before, plus we’ve discovered that we work really well together. It’s strange, but despite having such a harrowing time last year my life is markedly better than it ever has been, and that’s basically because of Jonny. Well worth a kidney!

MN:
Many thanks for the interview, and the very best wishes for the both of you!