"1965, that was the year Vietnam hotted up," explains Jak Payne, guitarist with The Metros, the teenaged south London five-piece who count Squeeze, Ian Dury and the Beastie Boys among their biggest influences. We're sitting outside a pub near Oxford Circus, enjoying one of the few sunny afternoons of July. Jak and his songwriting partner, vocalist Saul Adamczewski, are discussing the year that inspired the name of their record label, 1965 Records, also home to Dundee indie-rockers The View.
The Metros first came to the attention of 1965's James Endeacott last year, but the music biz supremo who famously signed The Libertines to Rough Trade back in 2002 had to bide his time because of the minor problem that some of the band were still studying for their exams. Endeacott had been taken with their demos - produced by Ian Dury's son, Baxter - which included the magnificent Education Pt. 2 (an attack on the schooling system) and Missing In Acton (the story of a hapless armed robber, loosely based on a friend of Jak's father's called Ginger).
Saul and Jak have been mates "since they were born". Their parents had been school friends, before finding jobs in the music business. Saul's dad designed record sleeves for A&M - the Captain Sensible Xmas single with the free foam beard was a favourite - while Jak's father played session bass for, among others, Squeeze's Glenn Tilbrook. Aged 15, they started writing songs together, recruiting mates Freddi Hyde-Thompson (drums) and Charlie Elliott (bass).
To begin with, the band's influences were ska, Oi punk and The Libertines and The Strokes. As habitués of Sydenham and Peckham, they also absorbed the prevailing urban soundtrack of R&B and grime. But The Metros' sound developed into something truly distinctive after Saul's move from his mother's to his father's house two years ago. To his delight, his new bedroom contained his dad's old vinyl record collection - everything from The Specials and The Clash to Ray Charles and Bo Diddley, but most crucially Squeeze and Ian Dury & The Blockheads. The latter spurred he and Jak to write gritty, witty character songs inspired by the edgy, semi-criminal underworld on their doorstep, as well as their own colourful teenage lives.
Scheduled to go into the studio this month, the songs they've amassed so far suggest they're all set to be the latest in a line of knavish but gifted London-based ne'er-do-wells that stretches all the way back to The Small Faces, via Madness, Squeeze, Flowered Up and The Libertines...
