The Paddingtons on their reunion shows in 2025, chaotic moments and more

By Jack Arnold

Hull’s hometown heroes, The Paddingtons, make a mighty and raucous return to the stage to celebrate 20 years of their album ‘First comes first’. After some elusiveness, we managed to catch up with The Paddingtons on their second sold-out night at the illustrious The New Adelphi Club In Hull. With the green room sofas full of the other bands, plus some friends and family, we resort to plonking ourselves on the floor armed with a few cans of Red Stripe and ready to conduct a classy interview!

Image – Darren Rodgers – The New Adelphi Club , Hull 20/04/25

So, 3 nights in 3 days. How are we feeling?

Lloyd] Yeah good. I’m not lying.

Grant] Yeah honestly, great, it’s been really fun up to now.

So you played Stockton yesterday, and you’ve also played Nottingham, how have the crowds been VS the hometown show, have the crowds been receptive?

Lloyd - Well, Nottingham was interesting, ‘cause it was a two day multi-venue festival with Nottingham bands and others from the surrounding area. And you don’t always get in for the bands you want to see, so half the crowd were like, “Well who are you then?” And the other half were genuine Pads fans, we had to earn it, so Tom really upped it for that one and really gave it everything, and at the end I’d hope we had loads of New Paddington’s fans. Yesterday was kinda the same in Stockton.

“Yeah there’s a lot of people there going in with no expectations again”.

Lloyd - It was interesting actually, there was a young kid at the front about 14, he knew every word, and the album’s been out 20 years.

“We should give him a shout out! Let’s locate him and find out his name”.

Post show, I did find this exact Paddington’s fan, Theo, who’s been a huge Paddington’s fan since he was 7 years old. I witnessed him front and centre enthusiastically bellowing out every word without missing a beat!

Lloyd] The Hull show on Friday was really good, a proper hometown crowd, we’ve got some real good Scots fans, they didn’t bring us any fucking Buckfast though!

“There’s loads in the cellar we bought for Buckfest!”

Back to the questions! A question from Sharon Regan;  favourite flavour of crisps?

Grant] Pickled onion hands down. Walkers pickled onion .

Lloyd] There’s a story behind that, do you remember Dave Cardo who passed away?

Grant] He was my best friend. And I think we became best friends when we realized we both loved Walkers pickled onion.

Lloyd] We bought him a box for Christmas once.

Grant] We were once sat in Queens and got a taxi to Pennine Rambler on  North Bransholme to buy loads of them. Taxied back to Queens and sat at the bar all night eating them, cost us about £30.

Lloyd] Favourite crisps, scampi fries.

Another personal question, from Jimi Arundell for Lloyd;  he said why were you such a twat in A level history?

Lloyd] He’s a wanker for that! I only have good things to say about him. Anyway he’s wrong, it was sociology. Jimi was the coolest kid, he was once late for class and told the teacher it was because he had been queuing all night at HMV for his signed Radiohead Kid A album.

Even though it wasn’t history class, he did go on to compliment your history knowledge now.

Yeah I love history, and he’s a good kid Jimi, although he likes Manic Street Preachers too much.

So the name, I think I know where it came from, Paddington bear, right? ‘Cause of members wearing the coat.

Grant] It was me to start with.  Me Mam gave me £40 to get a coat, when I started at Wyke college. And I went to a shop in Hepworth arcade and found the cheapest coat for about a tenner so I could spend the rest on booze.

Lloyd] Then we all got them.

So, origin story, I know this has all been done before, but how did the band start?

Lloyd] Me and Grant already played in a few daft bands. We practised in me Mam and Dad’s loft. We come from a musical family, but never gigged. Then we met Atkin through a mutual friend.  He had cheap blue aviators, and he was like “we’ll be friends”, and we were. We used to go to the Indie nights at Piper and chat about being in a band, then eventually we did it! We already knew Josh and Marv. At the start we used to do Bluetones covers and stuff. As we were forming, it was before the first Strokes single was released. And then that came out and changed everything, so we were like, let’s fuck that off, let’s do this.

So that’s definitely where a lot of the earlier Influence comes  from for you, a lot of it is a lot harsher and heavier.

Lloyd] Yeah, and then the Libertines were like the British answer to the Strokes. People used to say we sounded like the Libertines. We don’t! The earlier sound came from The Strokes, and early 70’s British punk, like The Buzzcocks, and definitely some basslines from The Cure.

And then as you’ve developed as a band, you’ve obviously done pretty well for yourselves. Was there a surreal ‘wow’ kind of moment where you realised this?

Lloyd] Yeah sat outside Tom Atkin’s house in the riot van, Jodof, a DJ in Hull, a legend, walked up and said, you’re gonna sign for £150,000 for Mercury Records. It was that easy.  But I think that was because we had done a one record deal with Alan McGee’s Poptones label, no money involved. He wanted to release this demo we had called ‘21’, so we did a double A side with that and ‘Some Old Girl’, and it went to 47 in the charts with no promo. So Mercury were like okay, who are these? Poptones was essentially a feeder into Mercury. And that’s when they signed us. But it’s not your money is it? It’s like a loan.

Did that take quite a while to pay back?

Lloyd (laughs) – fuck knows mate!

Okay aha! Maybe let’s not get into this!

Lloyd] There was a point though that year, Hubbard had worked it out, between summer 2005 and summer 2006, we did two hundred and fifty fucking odd gigs! We did not stop gigging! People don’t do that now. It was like £800 a gig. But I don’t remember getting any of that!

Wow! That’s some pretty hard-core stuff! And still partying at the same time?

Lloyd] No no no. We might have done more parties than gigs!

I reckon you’ve got some good stories from that time?  I want an inside exclusive scoop that people haven’t heard before.  Obviously people have heard the one with the Portuguese punks in a squat in London that the police shut down (look it up). Have you got something parallel to that?

(Now for the purpose of legal protection, these next set of incidents/accidents are all alleged! In the spirit of punk rock sometimes things get a bit wiry. A few injuries may have occurred at Pads gigs over the years, but we don’t want a headline “Have you been injured by Hull band ‘The Paddingtons’ In the past 20 years? You may be entitled to a claim!”)

Here’s a few things that may or may not have happened.

Nottingham University – Tom Atkin throws a mic stand and breaks someone’s arm.

Norwich arts centre (2500 capacity) – Tom Atkin (vocals) rugby tackles Martin Hines (guitar) on stage during ‘Keep Your Distance’. Marv falls over the barrier, the headstock of his Fender hits a fan in the face and leaves marks. The manager brings him out of the crowd and litters him with t-shirts and merch by way of profuse apology!

Newcastle – Tom Atkin throws a mic stand (again) and breaks a girl’s collarbone (again). The manager decks the fan in Merch (again). She refused to get in the ambulance ‘til the gig was over. Commitment!

Victoria Park – Rock against racism – Grant throws his drumsticks into the crowd hitting a fan in the eye. Sometime later they received a letter from an angry mother wanting to sue the band. The band’s lawyer agrees with Grant that he’s no longer allowed to throw his sticks vertically. From then on, he threw them horizontally.

Brighton Racecourse – Tom Atkin throws a can (not a mic stand) into the crowd, it hits a friend of the band in the face, Lloyd takes the friend to St John’s ambulance because they are concussed!

And back to the questions! So guys, if you could talk to your 20-something year old selves, with the knowledge and wisdom you have now, what advice would you give, what would you say to yourselves?

Lloyd] French David was right, and Guided By Voices are better than Weezer!

Grant]  Sign to a major record label, or don’t, but then maybe do ‘cause we might not be together now if we didn’t.

Maybe if you could live a different reality and see how different the experiences were?

Lloyd] We should have gone with Bjork’s management, who were also Arcade Fire’s and Johnny Thunder’s, I think.

Was that an option?

Lloyd] One day we met with about 5 different management companies and at the end of it we had to choose one.

Grant] He picked the one that was nicest to him.

Who and what inspires your music?

Lloyd] Early days, obviously The Strokes, the first wave of UK punk, the 1st wave of US punk, and Australian punk as well.

Grant] [Kerrang] New Blood volume 2.

Lloyd] Then the really underground stuff, like The Beatings. The later stuff, I guess it’s Pavement, Guided by Voices, Weezer, alternative American stuff. The songs I write, or have written, you can hear in the melodies, there’s folk music and gospel music ‘cause I’ve always been into that.

And locally, from a personal level, and not a musical one, what artists inspire you?

Grant] Turismo.

Lloyd] Darren Rodgers. (Who is coincidentally right next to us and pipes up with “well said”).

And what about in the current scene?

Lloyd - A couple of years ago, Cannibal Animal were fucking brilliant, and Moo’s other band Vulgarians were brilliant. Lumer are brilliant, and what BDRMM (pronounced Bedroom) are doing is fucking wild. I mean 5/5 on the NME on their first record, and that’s their 3rd  record now.

And they are playing bigger venues now.

Grant] And they are only gonna go bigger, it’s great to see.

Lucia] Ryan is Jack’s step-brother.

Lloyd] I didn’t know that.

Yeah Ryan and Jordan are both my step-brothers.  

Lloyd] There’s loads of little links in that band. Connor’s Dad, Archie (Eddie Wood) was in bands in the 90’s , playing alongside those bands there, Salako and Pavement. (His band Horseguards Parade supported Pavement when they reformed )

Grant] Salako, there’s also a Mogwai connection between us and them.

Lloyd] Is there?

Grant] We went to watch Celtic with them, and I also recorded our second album on Mogwai’s drum kit.

Lloyd] And the guitarist in BDRMM, an older guy,  Joe Vickers. He used to play bass and wear a straw hat in a band called The Morphines with Chris Marsay. Joe’s been on the scene for years. As long as us lot really.

And in relation to that, then and now, how do you think the climate of bands trying to ‘make it’ has changed, you know, we have Spotify and free streaming now. If you look at you  VS BDRMM on Spotify they have a bigger audience by over 50 times. (5,500 vs 300,000). But you’ve both done well for yourselves.

Lloyd] The models changed. Back then you had to play gigs to get signed. But now you don’t as much. It’s cottage industry stuff and more the  D.I.Y ethic.Yeah so there was a point when the label industry and record industry was wobbling, and they didn’t know what to do. Now the power is in the artist’s hands a lot more. It’s a long slog.  No one is getting signed for 150 grand anymore.

Do you ever argue in the band, and if so what about?

Lloyd] No we don’t.

Grant] Yeah we do.

Lloyd] No we don’t.

Lloyd] I mean we’re brothers. So if we ever argue, and it’s usually in a musical setting, one will ring the other and say sorry and we’ll sort it.

So you make amends very quickly?

Lloyd] Yeah we have to,  we’re brothers. Back in the day playing 250 gigs in a year together we’d get on each other’s tits a bit. But we always sort it out.

Lloyd – Mind if we pause for a quick cig and loo break and come back in 5 minutes.

—

Approximately 1 hour or so later after a bit of tenacious goose chasing… I find myself with Tom Atkin and Stuee Bevan, sat in Paul Jackson’s old flat/current office. Which was the only secluded place left in the building, loaded with a handful more itching questions. (Yes we talk a lot, I mean that’s the point of journalism right)?

—

I’m curious to know, the Molly’s Lips Nirvana cover, where did that come from? What inspired that?

Tom] I mean we were obviously just massive Nirvana fans, and Vaselines fans too ‘cause it’s a cover.

Stu] That’s a really good question, and what’s interesting is that it’s the only original Paddingtons era track I actually played on.  I was in a band called Kill City and we basically gate-crashed a Paddington’s recording.

Josh was the original guitarist wasn’t he? When did you come in?

Stu] Around that time, we were on a tour with Poptones, which was The Cribs, Paddingtons and Kill City. Just before that, Marv hurt his hand, and it was like a Back To The Future moment with Marty Mcfly, and Josh called me up and I stepped in for about 2 months. Then later there was a parting of ways, Josh moved to America, did Skaters and set up there, so I stepped back in and we did an EP. There’ve been various reunions over the years where Josh has come back, but he wasn’t able to make this one, so I’m in his shoes. I’m basically like the super sub on the bench, always stretching up, doing lunges in short shorts!

Ah that wasn’t the initial question was it?! It was the Molly’s Lips cover!

That’s okay, I got loads of information so I didn’t wanna interrupt.

Stu] So The Molly’s Lips cover. We were talking about another cover for this time round, and we were trying to find one that made sense in so many ways, the right selection that you can put your own spin on. And forgive me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think it was a massively pre mediated thing, it was probably quite a flippant choice. But it was such a perfect song for The Paddingtons, because the Paddingtons put their spin on it, and it changed in so many ways. And it’s a cover of a cover, this whole mirrors within mirrors thing that happens, for me it’s like a seminal event, and sometimes covers are special and sometimes they are just covers, this one is a special cover.

Tom] I don’t even know how it happened. I guess we just jammed it and it made sense. We used to do loads of covers, like The Pixies, and we used to play Holiday Song actually. We didn’t release any of it. But Molly’s Lips we just made our own if I’m allowed to say that, if nobody had ever heard it, it just sounded like one of our songs.

There’s a brief interlude here where we have some interesting discussions about covers and re-covers. Stu enlightens me that the famous tune ‘Step On’ by The Happy Mondays is actually a cover! (What?!). The original is by an African songwriter called John Kongos, it entered the charts in 1971 and peaked at number 4 . Then it was re-invented by The Happy Monday and re-entered the charts in 1990, peaking at number 5 and staying in for 27 weeks. We also chatted about an article the speculated if The Vaselines would have found fame without Kurt Cobain . The article suggests so (but Stu is not so sure). The Vaselines were part of a very niche Scottish wave of indie, with The Pastels, who released The Vaselines on their label . There’s a whole time capsule of joyous Scottish indie; Tallulah Gosh, BMX Bandits etc. It had major influence but via Kurt Cobain who championed a lot of these artists. Kurt also advocated American bands such as Melvins and Meat Puppets.

This was a segue to my next question.

So in your own music, individually you’ll all be inspired by different people and bring those elements into the band. Who are you both inspired by?

Tom] It’s difficult to break down ‘cause there’s so many. Obviously when The Strokes came along they shifted everything…

(* A loud jolly voices echoes down the corridor “Hello kids! Oh sorry, are you doing an interview?”. Adelphi manager Paul Sarel is giving someone the classic Adelphi tour, through the archives of it’s 40 years of rich musical history, Pulp, Radiohead, Green Day, The Stone Roses…)

Tom - So before then we didn’t really know what we wanted to do. In my teens The Stone Roses is where it started with guitar and indie music. We were listening to them in the car earlier, and in their earlier stuff, they were a punk band really.

Stu] So from what I’m hearing, as a fan initially and then being involved in the band later. What was signature to me about The Paddingtons, is they had the huge melodic song writing you would associate with The Brit-pop era, and by default The Stone Roses as Godfathers of the Britpop era, I would argue. Then for the fire to be lit in The Paddingtons at that time of The Strokes, who made everything a lot slicker and cooler. I talked to Lloyd about them, and the way they sort of brought things back to basics, the way The Fall did, ‘cause Strokes were influenced by The Fall, along with bands that were moving notes under continual chords as a stylistic thing. Lloyd said he was very influenced by that. So if you combine that very slick, modern rock ‘n roll into Brit-pop and huge song writing, and you put Tom at the front of the stage with a voice that’s the size of a fucking planet, you’ve got something magic. And it worked, it was authentic! When they used to come down to London as young lads, I used to go watch them and I was fucking mesmerised by the X factor they had as a band.

Tom] It was natural, we didn’t really force anything or try to copy anything, it just really organically happened. We were into punk and The Pixies and stuff. That one has always been a bit of a go to for me, if I’m writing, and if there’s one band in the world I’d like to be in, it’d be The Pixies, or maybe The Cribs a bit later on. And then that whole The Strokes and The Libertines era. We wanted to be involved in that, and people put us in that bracket musically, but we didn’t sound like any of them. We used to copy ‘em more in the sense of ripped jeans and leather jackets.

Stu] It’s an interesting experiment isn’t it? It’s a credit to the people in the band. You get these five people here, and 5 other completely different people in the next room, and you give them the same ingredients, a mix of influence from The Strokes, and the Stone Roses, or whatever, and imagine how different it’s gonna come out. It’s the people in the band, and their song writing and lyrical interpretation of things. I’m only just learning about who was involved in that first record and it was a truly collaborative thing.

Tom] We were having this conversation last night, thinking about where the sound of that first album came from, and the whole thing was a massive collaboration. No one did more work than anyone else, it wouldn’t have happened without any of us.

Stu] It was beautiful, and you were like 16/17 years old doing that.

Tom] We just met and it was just a very happy accident. We were mates and automatically gelled with each other, it’s all about the energy in the room.

Stu] It’s a rare thing, to get it that right.

The band dash off to catch their old label mates Mardous take stage!

The Paddingtons played two glorious hometown shows to sold out crowds of ecstatic fans. I was ‘there at both (and crowd surfed too). The Pads still carry that same youthful, exuberant and electrical energy they did 20 years ago, an un-extinguishable flame of indie punk rock. The fans lapped it up, with seas of fanatics in Paddington’s tees waving their hands, jumping around like pogo sticks and screaming words at the top of their lungs!

20 years and going strong! What next I wonder?