By Richard Bennet

FORMED in 1972 in San Francisco the tubes have continued to deliver their unique brand of theatre and music. As the band return to the Brook in Southampton on Sunday, Richard Bennet sat down with the band's larger than life front man Fee Waybill

Music was a natural thing for the young Waybill when he was growing up in Scottsdale, Arizona. His mother was a singer, and before the family moved to Scottsdale she would sing in Omaha for all the big bands who would come through town, even singing with the great Duke Ellington.

“The house was full of music, my mother loved Broadway musicals, West Side Story, Sound of Music, we had all those type of albums in the house, my mother was always singing around the house and I was always singing around the house. As I grew older I wanted to get into the music I was hearing on the radio, then when the Beatles came out that changed everything for me. I was just about to go to high school and I just flipped out over their sound. I bought all their records I sung their songs all the time, I wanted to be in a band.” Says Waybill

It was during his school years that Waybill found his love for the theatre thanks to the director of arts at Scottsdale High, Mr Joe Eslie.

“He gave me my love for the stage I dedicated the first Tubes album to him. He was brilliant he directed the plays and he took me under his wing and he was always on my case. One day I went into his office and asked why he was always on my back, he said that I had something about me something that was special and he wanted me to pursue it and make it work for me” explains Waybill

When his friend Prairie Prince moved to San Francisco, Waybill and another friend Roger Steen moved with him they all travelled in an old milk truck they had christened Betty and so the formation of the Tubes had begun. When another band from Scottsdale arrived in LA the band was complete and the road to success started.

Starting off in the band as a background singer gradually working his way to the spotlight Waybill found his love of theatre an asset for the stage persona he created. Quitting the band in 1986, Waybill went on to a successful career as a songwriter working with Richard Marx. Coming back to the tubes in 1993 for a European Tour Waybill has stayed ever since.

The Tubes can still pack them in, and the maturity of the band has not seen them do away with the theatrics that their stage shows are legendary for, if anything it’s that aspect of the live performance that keeps Waybill excited.

“We are touring a new show, this time, around, we are playing songs we have never played live before. One of the opening numbers is Chuck Berry’s You Never Can Tell then we go straight into Monkey Time we have never played that one live. The whole show is an up-tempo kind of thing, it’s really a lot of fun”

And that is one thing you can be sure of at a Tubes show, it is always going to be a fun night and let’s be honest we can all do with a night of fun every now and again.