Today, we’re excited to sit down with Gaz and Tony, the dynamic duo behind Suspect Device Zine, a cornerstone of the punk zine culture. Their zine has been a vital voice in the underground scene, championing punk music, politics, and DIY ethos for years. Gaz and Tony have recently compiled their incredible journey into a new book titled Running at the Edge of Their World: The Suspect Device Fanzine Story. This book delves into the history, impact, and legacy of their influential publication. In this interview, we’ll explore their experiences, the evolution of Suspect Device Zine, and the stories behind their latest book.
Can you take us back to the very beginning? What was the initial spark that led you both to create Suspect Device?
Gaz: Good question to start with! To be perfectly honest I’ve no idea what made us want to start SD! We read ‘Sounds’ a lot in the early 1980’s, brought as many records as we could afford and sat in our bedrooms playing them while we soaked up every lyric and detail of the artwork on the covers. We didn’t go to that many gigs either although we were always writing off for stuff – so we may have got a flyer or something in the mail. All I can really remember is that it was Tony’s idea. Well, that’s my version of events – he also wanted to start doing one quite a while before we actually did and eventually produced our first issue. 40 years is a while ago now and the finer details were not documented!
Tony: I cannot really remember what made me want to do a fanzine either. Around the time we were leaving school, Gaz and me had tentative thoughts of forming a band, but with there only being two of us it didn’t get very far. It was a year before we actually started SD that I suggested we should do a zine, but he wasn’t into it so I didn’t pursue it at that point. Around a year later, in 1984, I got hold of issue 4 of Damaged, a zine that came out of Dorset. What struck me, apart from it being a great zine, was that on facing pages there were interviews with Crass and 4-Skins. Gaz and me have never been interested in the division of punk and if we liked a band then we liked a band, we didn’t care what sub-genre of punk the music press had assigned them, so seeing these two disparate bands in the same zine, next to each other, was inspiring for me. Thankfully the second time I suggested that we do a zine, Gaz was now into it and Suspect Device was born.
What was it like putting together your very first issue? Do you remember the content and the reception it received?
Gaz: I don’t own a copy of our first issue! I owned the old manual typewriter acquired by my Dad, when the typewriters where he worked were updated to electric and we went from there. SD was not a pioneering DIY zine either – I think by the time our first effort was produced we’d seen a few others and were just starting to be part of the emerging local Southampton Punk scene. Overall, I think it was well received and we sold as many as we could get copied by Tony’s Dad! He must have done a fair few hundred for us too!
Tony: We didn’t really know what we were doing when we started, we just knew we wanted to do it. My memories of putting that first issue together is of having a lot of fun. We’d generally sit round the table in the back room of Gaz’s house, listen to records and make each other laugh. I was already in contact with Gaz Naylor the original Resistance 77 drummer, and Gaz Stoker the bass player with Red London, so featuring them was easy, both were happy to answer some questions. One thing that Gaz and me have always liked is silliness, so the ToyDolls fast, silly songs appealed to us, and we had recently been to see them, so we just sent them some questions in the mail. I reminder we included a load of top ten lists, just from the two of us, which in hindsight wasn’t a great idea, but like I said, we really didn’t know what we were doing. Also, there records we were reviewing were mainly from the bigger, more established bands. So we were doing it ourselves, but we weren’t really in touch with any DIY scene at that point.
How did you develop the unique voice and style of Suspect Device over the years? Were there any particular influences or moments of evolution?
Gaz: I think it’s fair to say that our early issues still focused on the late 70’s and early 80’s UK Punk scene and we were now in the mid 1980’s and many of the bands we liked had split up! I’m not even sure we were unique as I feel that all the zines I read back then were fairly unique or had their writers own stamp on them. After the first few issues though we were definitely evolving – we’d moved away from a lot of our early influences and found that there were loads of bands forming and creating their own scenes. I think the mid 1980’s was when the DIY Punk zine was at its peak. Loads of people trading fanzines, setting up record labels or distros and genuinely doing it themselves. What was the alternative? Punk was truly underground by the mid 1980’s – even the bigger Anarcho bands from a couple of years earlier, although part of a DIY culture, still got their records into the shops! We know – cos we brought them!
Tony: If SD has any voice then it’s just Gaz and mine. We have never thought of ourselves as journalists, we just love punk and want to write about our favourite bands, nothing more than that. Once we’d got going we were buying a lot of zines and I think we were very inspired by local ones like Beer Can. The evolution of the zine was due to us feeling more confident in what we wanted the zine to look like and also because we were now part of an exciting local DIY scene that had opened our eyes to new bands, new zines and new people. Our tastes were moving away from the older, bigger bands towards more underground and more exciting bands. Suspect Device started to reflect that straight away.
In the early days, you used typewriters and cut-and-paste layouts. Can you share some of the specific techniques or hacks you used to get the zine published?
Gaz: From my point of view there were no specific techniques. As I said earlier, we just had an old manual typewriter, Tippex for the typo’s, paper glue and a pair of scissors! That was a fanzine before Microsoft and the digital age! We then took our bits of A4 to our various sources who printed them for basically nothing!
Tony: There wasn’t any other way of doing a zine then, apart from handwriting it, and I’m sure Gaz will tell you my handwriting has never been the best. Pretty much all zines were done that way then, on old typewriters, several Pritt Sticks and countless bottles of Tippex. Initially it was only Gaz who had a typewriter, so most of the first two or three issues were done at his house. I did get my own manual typewriter in time so was able to do more when I was at home, but it was always more fun getting together to do the zine and as far as I remember most of at least the first two issues were cut and pasted together at Gaz’s house.
The book mentions illicit night-time photocopying. Do you have any funny or memorable stories from those late-night sessions?
Gaz: Over to Tony for this answer as it was his Dad that covertly got them done at night! I used to get the girls in the office where I was an apprentice to print a load up while the boss was out! We just didn’t have the spare cash to get them done properly and it was by all means necessary to get our cut and paste efforts out to the zine buying public. The price we put on the zines was basically to cover any costs – we’ve never made any money, but then again that was never the idea.
Tony: No stories really. Gaz will be able to tell you about the issues he got printed at his work, but my dad was the one who copied most of the early issues at his work. He was an electrician who’d got a promotion and so had access to an office that had a photocopier. He’d stay late and print off copies for us, not really night-time, it just meant he was late home of this tea. I don’t remember him mentioning any particular funny stories I’m afraid, he’d just bring home a bundle of photo copied pages and I’d compile and staple them.
How do you think the DIY punk scene has changed from when you started to now? What are some of the biggest differences?
Gaz: The whole DIY Punk scene is now a lot older and a lot wiser, I think. No one has anything to prove as such and the advances in technology has made everyone a whole lot better connected. Ideas and music shared so much more easily. Who can remember the last time they sat and wrote a letter and put it in the post? 40 years ago, that was how you did it – a lot of people didn’t even have a landline let alone a mobile phone. There is no going back – just the memories of a bygone age!
Tony: It’s different now, the gigs are less regular, I guess we just got old. The local DIY scene isn’t as vibrant, although there are still gigs, and most of them are great, but there aren’t the number of overseas bands coming through that there once was and although a fair number of the original local scene are still around, we are older, have other responsibilities and have to juggle much more with real life than we once used to. Even though Phil and Ben who put on the best DIY gigs in town under the banner of A Public Dis-Service Announcement, and the guys who put on gigs in Portsmouth are younger than us, they have still been around for many years and have their own lives getting in the way. There aren’t so many young people around, which is a shame, but also not a criticism, it’s just that they have their own things going on. It’s a shame there aren’t as many gigs, but then we probably would’t be able to go to as many as we used to anyway.
What were some of the toughest challenges you faced in maintaining the fanzine, and how did you overcome them?
Gaz: I’ve not faced any really. The truth of the matter is as anyone involved with Suspect Device will know that Tony is the driving force. He would be best placed to give a more in-depth answer as he tells us when it’s time for another issue, gathers up our various contributions and produces a thing of great beauty to send off to the printers.
Tony: Well, both of us have faced some personal challenges in our lives over the years, but I’ve always found working on the zine helps me. The biggest challenge for me was early on when Gaz said he didn’t want to do the zine anymore. At the time I wasn’t feeling very confident at all so the prospect of doing the zine alone was daunting. I did consider stopping, but pretty quickly realised I didn’t want to, so I carried on and, thankfully, it wasn’t long before Gaz was back. Other than that I don’t think either of us has really thought about needing to maintain the zine, we do it because we love it, always have and I guess by now we always will.
Can you talk about the role Suspect Device played in building and supporting the punk community? How did it feel to see the community grow around your work?
Gaz: I don’t think we’ve built any Punk community! I feel we slotted into a supporting role when the local scene in Southampton got going around 1984/85. We wrote the zine and wrote about what was going on. Others set up gigs and for a good few years a lot of great bands came to us. Other similar scenes around us had been going for a year or two as well – Bournemouth had a great scene, but we were never really at that party. We’ve made some great mates out of it though.
Tony: I’m not sure we could claim that the scene grew around our zine, I think it’s fair to say that we were able to grow because of the local scene. We covered local bands and supported the gigs, but I think that it was the burgeoning scene inspired us as we put the early issues together, rather than the other way round. SD was part of the creative spirit of that scene, but we were just one part of the whole. It felt good to see the local scene thrive, it was a collective thing. We never felt in any way special or important, it was nothing like that we just fed off the spirit of creativity of the time.
How did you transition from the old-school methods of production to today’s more modern, slick output? What was that process like for you?
Gaz: Basically, Tony got a job working with computers and from memory I think he then got the zine properly done where he worked. We didn’t need to cut and paste anymore – you could make typo’s and just press delete. I’ve never felt Punk should be a trip down memory lane. I really still love the bands I grew up with, but I’m also constantly wanting to hear new stuff and it’s the same with the zine. A lot of people work hard on their contributions and I want those efforts to be well presented and want people turned on enough visually to read the zine and enjoy it. I don’t want to forget where we came from, but that was then and this is now. Technology has made things easier and quicker – conversely there are a lot more demands on our time now and we don’t have the time we had when we were 16/17 or 18 years old.
Tony: It was just a slow evolution. Once personal home computers became affordable my parents got one, so I’d go round their house to type up reviews/interviews etc, save them on a huge floppy disk and print the pages at work, so even then we’d still cut and paste the zine. After a while I got my own home PC and gradually started to lay them out on the screen. At the end of the 1980s I got a new job at the University and they had a copy room, so I’d get them to print the zines up for us. Over time we moved to laptops and our friend and long time contributor Stuart Armstrong has a contact with a print firm through his work, so we started to use them, they may not be the cheapest, but they are quick and the print quality is good.
The book highlights the lifelong friendships you’ve formed. Can you share a story about one of these friendships that was particularly significant?
Gaz: I don’t think I have anything particularly poignant except to say that most of the friendships that I have made have been through the Punk scene. They have been going for 40 years and we’ve all kept it fun – Tony and myself have basically remained the same for over 50 years! One thing I will share and I guess this is poignant – when my wife Helen passed away very suddenly in 2006, as well as her close friends and family at the funeral the local Punk community turned out too. She went to local gigs and knew everyone – I’ll never forget that.
Tony: A lot of the people we met in the early days of the local scene are still friends who I see at gigs and, obviously, Gaz and me have been friends from way before the zine, or punk rock, started. But I met Si Briggs when him and his wife Paula were down in London for a Descendents gig. We were introduced to each other and our friendship grew from there, despite me shocking him by announcing that I wasn’t particularly a big fan of the Descendents. Over the years the two of us have had lots of adventures together, seeing bands all over the UK as well as going to the the US and Netherlands. Si also helped us with the distro for a while and has contributed to the zine for most of our existence. He came along for the ride when Pilger toured with Paint It Black and despite geography (Si lives in Middlesbrough), the passing of time and our musical tastes diverging somewhat, our friendship has endured. It’s been a while since we had an adventure, but you never know, we may get another stupid idea at some point.
How did your friendship and shared love of punk rock and football influence the direction and success of Suspect Device?
Gaz: I guess our shared love of Punk Rock was key to the zine being what it is today. Football? I loved football before I ever got into Punk. Loads of people I know love football – various bands over the years have integrated a love of the beautiful game into their identity. It’s turned up in SD from time to time, but essentially for me – football hasn’t overly influenced the direction of the zine.
Tony: Like Gaz, I don’t think our love of football has influenced the zine at all, but without our shared interest in punk we wouldn’t have started the zine in the first place. Before punk rock became a thing we’d play football in the park, or the road, but once we got into punk, and the few other punks at school dropped out of it, there was just the two of us, so all we had was each other and some vague idea of putting a zine together. Over the years our punk rock tastes have differed a little, which helps the zine have a wider appeal as we both feature bands that the other wouldn’t have thought to get in contact with, which I like a lot.
What motivated you to write “Running at the Edge of their world”? What was the writing process like for both of you?
Gaz: If we had not very generously been asked to write the book, I personally would never have written a book about the zine! I struggled to write my contribution if I’m honest from the point of view that it was never meant to be about the writers, but the bands we liked and interviewed. I hope that doesn’t sound ungrateful?! The writing process got a little easier as I got my head around it and I’m very pleased with the end result. Yet again though – if Tony hadn’t motivated and driven us all on, I doubt there would be a book. I hope that anyone who buys it enjoys it and see’s it for what it is – that is a book about the spirit of DIY Punk.
Tony: The idea of writing a book came after an email conversation I had with David at Earth Island. We’ve known David a long time, since he sent us the demo of his first band, Couch Potatoes back in the early 1990s. If that conversation hadn’t happened then I don’t think we’d have ever considered writing a book. We’ve never viewed ourselves or what we do as particularly special or worthy and the only reason we have kept going for so long is because we love it, and want to tell people about the bands and records who inspire us. It’s as simple as that.
I found it difficult to get started on the book as I didn’t have a clear idea of how I wanted the book to look. I knew I didn’t just want it to be just an anthology of the zine and that I wanted to highlight the local scene that inspired us, but I couldn’t get my head round how to do that. When I hit on the idea of using the zine as a kind of timeline, with stories around that of things we’ve done along the way that the zine has allowed us to do. Over the writing period I realised that I wanted to highlight the friendships and community that has been so important to us, that’s why we have other people’s voices in there, because the zine wouldn’t have lasted so long without co-operation. Even while writing I sought advice from Pete Zonked and Alan Marshall as both have been contributors to the zine over the years and have been very encouraging and supportive.
It may have been obvious to take lyrics from ‘Suspect Device’ for the title, and I did consider calling it Inflammable Material Burning In Our Head, but I decided on lyrics from ‘At The Edge’ because I thought that Running At The Edge Of Their World summed up what it felt like when we started the zine. We lived on the edge of the New Forest, and for the first few years of our punk rock journey there was just the two of us, and looking back it did seem like we were running at the edge of what was going on in bigger cities and even, as it turned out, the punks that lived just a couple of miles away from Gaz’s house. We didn’t know them as they went to a different school, but they were already going down to Bournemouth or Portsmouth for DIY gigs that we didn’t even know were happening.
What kind of impact or reaction have you seen from readers of your book? Any memorable feedback?
Gaz: As I type this the book is just days away from release – the initial reviews have been kind and generous from reviewers who’ve had advanced copies. On that basis I hope that trend carries on! Please!
Tony: With the book not being out yet, the few reviews we’ve had so far have been very positive. I particularly like that it seems our voices come through, and the essence of the zine is there, which is what I wanted, but I wasn’t sure if we’d captured it. Thankfully it seems we have.
I particularly liked the way Ian Canty summed up the review on his Slicing Through The Static page (https://staticmemories.wordpress.com/):
“Running At The Edge Of Their World is about Punk Rock, but also fundamentally about friendships that have endured – if you’re not rooting for Gaz and Tony by halfway through, you must have a hard heart indeed. But it is also a cracking, vital read, a guide to brilliant bands that have slipped through the cracks and filled writing that captures all the excitement of witnessing maximum Punk blasted out in its best environment, i.e. a small venue. It’s a book that after I had read it, I felt substantially better for doing so, which has to be worth its weight in gold. You don’t necessarily have to have seen an issue of Suspect Device to enjoy what is here, but I’ll wager you will want to afterwards. A book to treasure.”
That will do me just fine.
What advice would you give to someone who’s thinking about starting their own fanzine or diving into the DIY punk scene today?
Gaz: There are no rules! Only be a decent human and respectful of others! Then just do your own thing! It’s yours to make and meld into whatever you want it to be.
Tony: Do it. Even if you’re unsure of what to do, still do it. We had no clue when we started, but we did it anyway. It doesn’t matter if you only produce as couple of handwritten pages, or an on-line e-zine, as long as you’re happy, then do it. Dive in, get involved and have fun. Zines are not a way to get free records, fame or fortune, but they are a way of making friends and having fun. So get creative, you never know where it will lead you, or who you meet along the way.
What’s next for Suspect Device? Do you have any upcoming projects or ideas you’re excited to work on?
Gaz: From my angle it’ll just be more of the same – we have a formula that works and people enjoy it. I’d love to sell more copies as I actually think the zines are pretty good. Everyone who contributes has something different to put into the mix and the one thing we always wanted from SD was not to shore up the different Punk genres. You can like the ‘Pop’ edge or the ‘Anarcho’ edge! Come and join us!
Tony: We have just sent our issue 72 to the printers, and are already thinking about the issue after that. Recently we resurrected the SD podcasts and I want to make that a bit more regular and collaborative but, as ever, I’m not sure quite how to make that work as well as I want it to, but as we’ve always done we’ll just go for it and see what happens.
We have also released the last three records from my band, Abrazos, and I’m hoping there will be more of those at some point.
SD will continue, we won’t think too much about where we’ll end up, and any changes will be organic. As long as there ware bands and people who inspire us we’ll keep doing what we’re doing.
THOUGHTS WORDS ACTION 