The Almighty Page 4
"In hindsight we should never have split up," the bandŐs frontman laughs, "we should just have taken a break for a year, and gone off and done our own things and then regrouped, but it's easy to say that now. At that time we were getting a bit burned out after going at it constantly for years and I was ready for something new. But I felt half-excited and half-distraught because up until then The Almighty had been my whole life."
Something new for Ricky involved a move back to Ireland (Dublin to be precise) and the formation of a swaggering new MC5/Stooges-inspired band, with young Dubliners Ciaron McGoldrick (bass) and Gary Sullivan (drums). "was a great wee band," Ricky insists, "and we had a great laugh for two years. We broke all the commercial rules we wanted to break and just went out and made a f**king racket and had a great time doing it. But even when I was doing wherever I went, people knew me as Ricky from The Almighty and wanted to talk about The Almighty. "That kinda bothered me at first but then I realised this is who I am and what I've believed in for the last ten years and it made me feel quite proud. ItŐs like Lemmy from Motorhead I suppose, I'll always be Ricky Warwick from The Almighty. And I'm quite happy with that. I suppose part of me was always still thinking about The Almighty and I kinda felt like there was always something telling me I shouldn't have given up on it."
In early '99, over a few pints in Dublin, Ricky Warwick asked Stumpy Monroe if he fancied re-starting The Almighty. His old friend thought about it for all of ten seconds. And then The Almighty were back in action. On the recommendation of Ricky's soul brother/boozing buddy Chris McCormack (ex-3CR, now in The Infidels), ex-Whatever man Nick Parsons came aboard to fill the vacant guitar slot, and with Floyd London returning to the four string position, the quartet returned to the band's Glasgow roots to set about piecing together a new Almighty record in Berkeley Street Studios, where theyŐd penned and rehearsed the material for their first two seminal albums.
