The Vapors: Flying High with Wasp In A Jar

The Vapors: Flying High with Wasp In A Jar

The Vapors are best known for their infamous runaway hit Turning Japanese, which was played all over the radio airwaves and MTV back in the 80’s.  Following their breakout album New Clear Days was the dark and brooding Magnets, featuring standout underground favorites such as Jimmie Jones and Spiders.  35 year later and before a pandemic, The Vapors would return in an epic way, unleashing their comeback Together in May 2020- the soundtrack of the summer for many a longtime fan.  And now in the year 2025, The Vapors unleash the almighty Wasp In A Jar, a high-flying collection of new tracks destined to be much revered fan favorites.  Slated to appear on the Lost 80’s Live Tour this summer along with A Flock of Seagulls, General Public, Big Country, Belouis Some (interview coming soon to Highwire Daze btw) and more, The Vapors have arrived and are ready to rock your once more.  Highwire Daze recently had the honor to interview bassist Steve Smith to catch up with the past, present, and future of this iconic band.  Read on…

We’re here with Steve Smith from The Vapors. First of all, before we go to Wasp In a Jar, let’s go back a few years to Together. What made The Vapors decide to get together and record a new album at that point in time?
Well, we got back together to do four gigs in 2016, and they’d gone so well, and people wanted us to keep going. We kept getting offered gigs, and we kept getting people to come to the gigs. So, we thought, yeah, we’d keep going. We got a few new songs together. We went to New York and played three nights at the Mercury Lounge. I think we maybe played over the three nights, maybe played five or six new songs. At the end of one of the nights, someone who’d been at the gig approached our manager and said, “Look, I like some of the new songs. I’d like to finance you to do an album.” So, that was the reason we did it because somebody said, “Here’s some money, go and make an album.”

Was there any overall story or concept behind that title, Together?
No, not really. Only in the sense that the band had gotten back together again. That was it, really.

Together came out in May, 2020, which was right when the pandemic began. What was it like to release your first album in 35 years during that time?
Well, we were actually advised not to do it by the distribution company that was going to distribute the album and do the promotions and things for us. They actually advised us to put it off for at least six months. But we had the album finished for more than a year, and we had it finished but not got it out for longer than a year, and we just didn’t want to put it off anymore. Also, I thought, well, if everyone else is putting off their releases, surely that gives us a bit more of a space. We did get quite a lot of written reviews in press and magazines and things like that, because a lot of major acts pulled their releases and put them back. So, I think it kind of worked for us in a way.

People needed something to listen to as well during that time, so.
Yeah, a few people have come to me and said that “Summer of 2020, I listened to that album all summer. It was the sound of summer for me that year;” which is gratifying and a nice thing to hear, obviously.

In 2023, you played Cruel World over in Pasadena. What was that experience like?
I’m basically a bit of a fanboy. I come from loving music at a very early age, spending all my money on records when I was a kid, and I’m just still basically, at heart, a music fan. So, to be on a festival like that – I mean, we haven’t really done very many things like that. So, for us, it was just a major, brilliant, exciting thing. It’s the biggest crowd we’ve ever played to by miles. Thankfully, some fantastic person went to the show and held their phone up and filmed the whole thing, and I thank them forever for doing that because it means you can go and look at it on YouTube. I went and watched it on YouTube, and I thought, “You know what? We played really well. We gave of our best. We couldn’t have been any better.” So, that was really gratifying as well. But it was just a great experience. Everyone had their trailers in a kind of backstage field. It was like, oh my God, look, there’s Billy Idol. Oh my God, look, they’re… So, it was just, yeah, we were a bit overwhelmed.

Let’s talk about Wasp In a Jar. Is there any story or concept behind that title, Wasp In a Jar, and that very cool cover?
Do you know what? There’s a song called Forever and Ever, and it’s one, the sort of chorus line is “You are my Valentine, Always been my porcupine, You are my wasp in a jar.” It just jumped out. It’s a really great lyric because it’s just so weird and funny. Someone said, “Oh, that could be a good title for the album.”  No one could come up with anything that was better. Obviously, it’s a really interesting title. It does capture the kind of the feel of the album, which is this kind of angsty get-out-there thing – like a Punky Energy thing. So, in the end, we just went, “Yeah, let’s go for it. Let’s just use that.” But it is from a line from one of the songs.

Tell me about Look Away and about Dave dealing with his Parkinson’s disease.
I think it’s pretty self-explanatory in the lyrics, really. I can’t speak for Dave. Dave writes all of the lyrics, and he doesn’t really like to sort of define what they’re about or anything. But yeah, that’s about him trying to come to terms with his Parkinson’s.

You’re going to tour the US in a few months. Tell me about that tour. What are you most excited about?
Yeah, it’s the Lost 80s Live Tour with A Flock of Seagulls, Big Country, General Public, us, the Polecats, and a few others. Many, many acts. It’s a six-week tour of America going all over, and we’re all really looking forward to it because it’s the same acts mostly each night. You end up making friends. You make a lot of friends doing something like that. I’ve still got friends from the last time we did the Lost 80s Tour in 2019. Still got a lot of great memories and friends from that tour. So, I’m hoping it’s going to be more of the same.

Let’s talk about some of the things that you did after The Vapors broke up. Tell me about your band, Shoot!Dispute. When you look back on that, what do you think of it now in retrospect?
That was after The Vapors. I didn’t really want to do too much music. I ended up playing with a rockabilly covers band, which is weird.  But then there was four of us that were really good friends, and we were all three of us were musicians, and one was a singer. It just was inevitable eventually that we’d go into a rehearsal room and just mess around. It just kind of took off. Everyone had loads of ideas. I’m still friends with all those people. We got close. John Peel really loved us. John Peel gave us two sessions. He put us on his live.  We got close to getting signed. We went on tour with Bruce Foxton of The Jam. So, we got close.

Tell me about going on tour with Bruce Foxton. What was that experience like?
We had such a good time. We had no money at all, and we were all in the biggest state car. It was an eight-seater car. So, there was eight of us in the car. Then we had a horse box with all the equipment in it, and we stayed at the cheapest bed and breakfasts in each town. I can tell you the cheapest bed and breakfasts in Liverpool and Manchester in the early to mid-80s were pretty grim. But we just always try to have a good laugh, and that’s something I brought with me back into The Vapors. It’s just like, let’s just have a laugh. Let’s just have fun, and then you can get through any kind of setbacks, really.

What was it like working with Frank Tovey of Fad Gadget?
Frank. Oh, God bless his soul. God rest his soul. Frank became one of my best friends. We ended up sharing a house together. I mixed two of his albums. Then, he asked me to play guitar in his band, and we went out and did a European tour, playing guitar for him. Yeah, we were really, really good friends. It’s just a real tragedy that he died so young.  I miss him still. He was such a great laugh to go out with and such a mad performer. Completely mad. Off stage, mild-mannered. On stage, complete lunatic.

Let’s go back to New Clear Days in 1980. When you look back on that first album by The Vapors, New Clear Days, and that time in the world, what do you think of it now in retrospect?
I still really like it. I still think it stands up, especially the remaster. I think the remaster has really brought the guitars out a bit more, which I like. But I mean, the songs on that album are just all killer, no fella. They’re just all great songs.

Did you ever think that Turning Japanese would become so both famous and infamous?
No, not really. I mean, we knew it was very catchy. We knew it was very catchy. Vic Smith did a brilliant production job on it and when we heard it back finished the record, it was like, wow, yeah, this is really, really good. But you never can tell, obviously. But yeah, we had an idea that we had a possible… I mean, everyone told us it was a hit record before we put it out. But obviously, we were really pleased that it was so successful in so many territories.

Then right after that, you followed it up with a really dark album called Magnets. Tell me a little about Magnets and where the band was at that time.
Ee’d signed initially to a record company called United Artists. We had a choice between them and a record company called Polydor who The Jam were with. Polydor was a bit of a big conglomerate, whereas United Artists was a small label with maybe 15 employees all on one floor of a building. For them to sign someone, everyone in the company had to believe in it. They didn’t sign bands for one album and then drop them. So, we went with them. We thought, this is the label for us, these are great. But basically, as soon as Turning Japanese was a hit, our record company got sold to EMI, who then fired all of the people that were involved in signing us and working with us and everything. All of a sudden, we’d signed to a small little label because we liked that idea, and then within six months, we were in the biggest corporate record company in the world.

We just didn’t really get any support from the record company. So, everyone kind of knew that it was going to be a struggle from there, even though we had Turning Japanese. I think Dave was finding quite a lot of pressure to write the new album. It’s like, “Come on Dave, you’ve gotta write the new album!” So, I just think that was just where his head was at the time.

Did the song Jimmie Jones receive any controversy when it first came out?
Not in the UK. No. None whatsoever. I doubt if most people even realize who it’s about. I would say probably not. Yeah, nobody really spoke about it in America that much, to be honest.

Back to present day. Would you like to actually tour in support of the new album Wasp In A Jar?
Yeah, we’d love to. Really, we’d love to. We are doing some small club gigs in the UK, but not very many, like seven shows at very small grassroots venues. Then we’ve got some shows with Big Country in April and May where we probably won’t play too many of the new songs. A few, obviously, but maybe not so many as we’d like.  We’d love to do a proper big tour of the new album stuff. But after we’ve done the Big Country tour in July, we’re off to do the Lost 80s thing. So, yeah, maybe later in the year, hopefully, we’d love to. We’ll play anywhere that people pay us to play

So, New Clears Days came out in ’80, Magnets came out in 1981, then you took a break for 35 years.
Yeah.

Together came out in 2020, and Wasp In A Jar is about to be released. So, that’s kind of like a pattern. Two albums, 35 years, two albums. Are we going to have to wait another 35 years for the next Vapors’ duo of albums?
No, I hope not. I hope not, but I wouldn’t be expecting one for a little while yet because we’ve exhausted all the songs. So, we normally like to have 20 songs, which we whittle down to 14 if we’re doing an album. So, we’ve got to wait for Dave to come up with 20 new songs.

Well, hopefully, that doesn’t take 35 years.
Pretty sure it won’t. We’ve done quite a lot of singles, but they’ve all been digital only. So, we’re kind of toying with the idea of maybe putting all of the singles that we’ve done in the last few years, since we’ve come back onto one kind of vinyl album, maybe.

Do you have any messages for The Vapors’ fans who are reading this right now?
Check out the new album, and I hope you like it. We all feel that it’s at least as strong as any of our other albums, and I hope you feel the same way too.

(Interview by Ken Morton)

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