“Q”Magazine – April 2000
Acclaimed for their catchy rock tunes and barbed lyrics, Kingmaker came screaming out of Hull in 1990, spent the next five years as critics’ darlings but never sold a significant number of records. Their cred may have taken a Pete Townshend-style dent when abrasive songwriter Lawrence ‘Loz’ Hardy threatened suicide then failed to deliver the goods.
Myles Howell (bass): Our first album, Eat Yourself Whole, was acclaimed but the second one got a more lukewarm reception. We’d been forced to re-record it by Chrysalis, to put more potential singles on. and we weren’t happy with that. When we went out on tour with it, we didn’t even play those tracks, we hated them so much.
The third album In The Best Possible Taste, was more of the same, and you just eventually get to a point where you ve had enough of loading amps in through backroom windows.
Our last show was in July 1995 at Midtfyns Festival in Denmark. The band was really over by then but we owed lots of money and we were offered loads to do the gig, so we could pay it off. Bon Jovi were headlining and we were playing in a tent that held 5,000 with only 500 people watching. We didn’t even speak to each other. it was that bad by then.
As soon as the band ended, I went to study psychology at the University of Hull,paying my way with a job at Homebase. I got a 2.1 in June 1999, then started work as a journalist on the Hull Daily Mail. I was briefly in a local band called Waltzer,but I don’t keep in touch with the others from Kingmaker and I don’t miss the music business at all. I prefer the stability of what I’m doing now.
John Andrew (drums): We had a furious rate of work. We recorded something like 90 self-written songs in four years, and I used to do some of the production and engineering. I actually think we did our best work on the last album, but nobody wanted to buy it. so we felt the magic was gone and the band had run its course.
At that point, none of us had ever had proper jobs. I worked briefly for a PA company,played in a couple of bands but, with my love of the engineering side of things,it made sense in 1998 to get this lob at the BBC World Service where I’m now a systems manager on the Asia and Pacific service.
Loz Hardy (vocals/guitar): According to John Andrew, Loz “is still working in London, but he keeps a low profile. He likes to be a bit of an enigma. I see him occasionally, but he’s usual pretty out of it. He probably goes to too many parties.He wrote a couple of tracks on the last Elastica EP.”