THE BIG TAKEOVER (USA, January 2003)

INTERVIEW WITH DAVID WESTLAKE

Mark Carry @ fracturedair.com 19 May 2014

"The Disinterest album came out of a vortex of unspoken, unspeakable frustrations, paranoia, and miscellaneous perversity."

INTERVIEW WITH DAVID WESTLAKE

Anthony Strutt @ pennyblackmusic.co.uk 6 June 2014

"No one expected that C86 would be remembered in 1987, let alone 2014."

SERVANTS RETROSPECTIVE

Voixautre @ onlythelonelymusic.blogspot.co.uk 30 December 2013

"Led by the vastly under-appreciated singer and songwriter David Westlake, who has more than once been described as a post-punk version of Ray Davies."

"A VERY BELATED POSTSCRIPT..." (12 May 2021)
"NEXT YEAR'S NOSTALGIA FEST" (22 March 2015)

JC @ The New Vinyl Villain

"So in just four years, David Westlake, regarded by many in the music press as one of the most intelligent songwriters of his era, had tried his luck on four different labels without ever escaping cult status."

"AS THE SERVANTS NEARED RETIREMENT" (26 October 2019)

Brian @ Linear Tracking Lives

C86 BOOK BY NIGE TASSELL

Chapter 16, pages 272-286; 2022 2022

C86 AND ALL THAT BY NEIL TAYLOR

Ben @ Did Not Chart 28 November 2017

DAVID WESTLAKE & THE GO-BETWEENS IN SESSION - 1987

Gordon Skene @ Past Daily 10 January 2017

THE SERVANTS

Reserved
Cherry Red

Shades of Velvet Underground (LP3 with Doug Yule, natch), Orange Juice, Syd Barrett. Hints of the original Modern Lovers. The Servants were the askew songwriting concern of one David Westlake - one of the 'lost' groups of the late 80s who suffered from the industry disease of record company forgetfulness and band squabbles. Owing to their otherness (or haughtiness, described in the memorable sleeve notes by latter-day guitarist, the youthful Luke Haines) The Servants mis-stepped themselves throughout their career. That doesn't matter. Commercial success is not important. The songs are great, they are a perfect collision of American artrock, British psychedelia and suburban angst. That's why Creation signed them, obviously. Imagine Nico was a guy and s/he tried a cover of the Beach Boys 'I Just Wasn't Made For These Times' (featured here) backed by The Feelies and Josef K. If you want a change from angular postpunk or four-to-the-floor maximum rock'n'roll, get this album. It rocks, artfully.

Charles Inskip
Artrocker June 2006

MOJO, July 2022, pages 63-65

From an interview with STUART MURDOCH of BELLE AND SEBASTIAN in US music magazine THE BIG TAKEOVER (January 2004); feature by Jack Rabid:

JR: ... I saw them at BAY 63 with THE SERVANTS.

STUART: [impressed] Really?! When?!

JR: About '87 or thereabouts, '86.

STUART: The Servants were a great band!!!

JR: Wonderful!

STUART: I love The Servants!

JR: I've since gotten to know [their bassist] PHIL KING a bit in his [later] LUSH days. And when I first met him, I told him I'd seen him in The Servants and he just about fainted. Like you have now! [ha ha]

STUART: In fact, I wrote to the guitar player from The Servants!

JR: Before LUKE HAINES? Do you mean the singer, DAVID WESTLAKE...?

STUART: Yes. I wrote to David Westlake before Belle & Sebastian were together. I spent quite a few years trying to find people to collaborate with, and I wanted to collaborate with him. And so I got to the stage where I thought I may as well get in touch with people from the '80s to see what they were up to... When I wrote to Westlake, I left my phone number, and I got an angry reply from the people who lived in the house. Obviously, they'd never heard of this guy, and they wondered how I'd got the address and what I was going to do. You know, they left an answering machine message and they said, "We don't want you to write back again! How did you get this address?" And they were really paranoid, as if they were spies or something.

JR: From the MI5!

STUART: That's it, you know what I mean! It's as if they were from the MI5 and I'd rumbled them.

JR: ... he might be pleased to know he had a fan. He wasn't properly appreciated, that guy...

STUART: Well, many of them weren't, which was a blessing in a way. Because I don't think they would've carried on and produced the music they did if they'd have been praised and had giant hits and things like that. It seems so odd, all that time, all that '80s time. It was like after punk, you know the music just went like that... As far as I'm concerned, a band in the '80s, I felt that a band shouldn't be considered any sort of success whatsoever. It always surprised me when any of those groups stuck their head
up and said, "Actually, we are trying to get a hit here." And I was laughing to myself, thinking, "Why?!" You know, if I were them, I'd be really annoyed at me. At this sort of attitude, you know. Because why not, why shouldn't they? But in turn, it's almost like they made the most interesting records failing, as usual...