IT'S SUNDAY night at the Leadmill and Twisted Wheel frontman Jonny Brown is soaking in sweat.

The band has just finished a set of punk-fuelled rockabilly indie rock.

His excessive perspiration bears testament to Twisted Wheel's aesthetic – frantic, gritty and relentless.

Twisted Wheel crowds behave like untamed beasts en masse – screaming women struggled past burly security guards to clamber on stage at Leeds Festival in August.

"That was a mad 'un," laughs Brown.

"This girl got past security and they kept throwing her about so I shouted at one point 'let her get up' – she looked like she wanted to get up that much and she somehow managed to get past, she distracted them and got up and ran behind me. I looked at her and then my string snapped."

Suddenly, he recalls, his guitar sound deadened.

"The audience and our sound men all thought she stood on my lead but it was my string that snapped.

"My guitar man was trying to get her off stage but I was turning round to him saying 'GET MY OTHER GUITAR!' but he started playing with my strap, so when I was singing I had to shout 'TELECASTER.' He got me a guitar for the last chorus."

This weekend the band support Oasis – a gig that Brown prophesised as a teenager: "I remember telling my Dad that one day I would be supporting Oasis," he says.

It's an important gig for both bands, for Oasis, it will be their first UK tour in more than two-and-a-half years.

It's marking the new Oasis album, Dig Your Soul. For Twisted Wheel, the tour exposes them to 18 arena audiences, supporting one of the bands that influenced them as teenagers.

But while Jonny Brown cites Oasis as part of the soundtrack of his youth, it was punk that got him hooked on playing in a band.

"I got into punk in the last year of school and that fired me up and I thought 'I need to start a band' – but erm, we're not like 'we're a punk band and we do this,' we're playing music naturally. If I'm having a nice time and a happy time I'll write a happy song," he says.

Twisted Wheel formed barely 18 months ago in Saddleworth, Oldham – more known for its brass bands than raucous indie acts.

The formation was a rushed affair, they got together only a week before their first gig. Now, the band have just recorded their debut with producer David Sardy (Oasis, Rolling Stones, Soulwax) in an illustrious LA studio.

"We've made the record and the record sounds great – we worked with a top producer in LA, which was amazing after years from spending ages trying record yourself in crappy studios in Oldham."

The band laid down their debut tracks at Sunset Sound studio in LA, the recording home of the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street, Led Zeppelin II and IV, The Doors' first albums and Janis Joplin's Bobby McKee.

"It's where Morrison got all that reverb. You sing your vocals in this chamber that's been painted a thousand times – it's where Morrissey did all his stuff.

We had to pull the carpet off the doors – it was like a tomb," says Brown, his excitement barely containable.

While the album retains Twisted Wheel's trademark raw sound, Brown insists it's "More energetic, with a bigger, cleaner sound than the older stuff – it's louder and bigger."

"I think that all our songs are made up of simple chords – being complicated isn't the sort of thing that I want to do and to be honest I don't know how to.

"The new stuff is even simpler but better put together – that's quite a technical thing to do. So it's like – they might be simpler but more effective."

But it was the tracks Smash It Up and You Stole the Sun that clinched Twisted Wheel's rapid ascent to one of indie's most hyped-about bands. Their You Stole the Sun embodies the band's punk influences and Northern roots: "We're from Oldham so it seemed fitting to use the lyric 'You Stole the Sun'.

"There's all these bands that talk about someone stealing the sun from their sky or head, as a romantic reference, but I wanted to write about a thieving bastard who actually steals the sun itself. That's basically what the song says," says Brown.

He cites his favourite line as: "I got so blind and selfish that I began to melt…" that's a line about a person, but I can't say who…," he laughs.

Twisted Wheel support Oasis at the Sheffield Arena this Friday.


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