It's ironic really. The Birmingham duo who just made music so they could listen to some tunes in their car became the Cinderella's in a music recording fairy tale. After meeting one night at a party, Mike introduced Richard to the Sunday market flea market sale - where they picked up odds and sods vinyls to sample for the music they began making. Their car tape became their first self titled album. They are Bentley Rhythm Ace and their mission is to put the fun back onto the dance floor no matter what it takes. On stage they are quite the picture - on the warm summer night in Perth, their final Australian tour date, the Bentleys are a partnership of beat twisted mayhem, punk-pink wigged hair a-flying and their trademark air raid sirens wailing. The stage prop of a Bentley car is a reminder of their very beginnings - Mike messes about on the decks in it while the windscreen wipers are going and headlights are on high beam. Yes indeed, the Bentley's are gonna sort you out.
Despite the heavy touring schedule the Bentley's face - after Australia they have the northern hemisphere to conquer, Mike remains in good travelling spirits. "We really love touring - we have a top list: Iceland is our favourite place to go then it's Australia then Japan - it's brilliant to tour around each city's sites, meet really nice people and do mad things," he says and then adds the Bentley's real secret for escaping tour stress. "Once we get to each new city we go to the highest point and smoke spliffs." Bentley Rhythm Ace have been touring as part of the festival Vibes On A Summers Day - performing with Pressure Drop, Norman Cook and Japan's DJ Krush. "This tour has been brilliant - we are really enjoying ourselves and the crowds are absolutely excellent - it's so good being able to see all of these happy faces out in the crowd," Mike says. "I've been sleeping a lot, eating a lot and then going down to the beach and building sand-castles. Us English people are really used to looking like we haven't been working hard with our pink and pasty skin - so I'm a bit scared to visit Australian beaches.
This is not the first time Bentley Rhythm Ace has toured America. "It was good touring the US - everything's rad and awesome there - even if you don't like it they still say it, and everything is so massive they waste loads of food." This famous musician lifestyle stuff still seems to be incredulous to Mike, who is quite happy to go along with the ride. "This stuff is all new to me, the touring and everything - and it's brilliant, I'm liking it so far - I've done loads of other jobs that drove me insane. "God I never expected this, we did this album as a car tape - something to listen to as we were travelling along. It was our friends who DJ'd and they convinced us to send the tape into someone - they gave us a list of record labels and we sent it to the first one on the list which was Skint - we would have taken anything we were so broke. We moaned all of the time about being broke," he says and announces, "this is like a sob story turned into a fairy tale - it's ace being able to walk into a bank now - a couple of years ago this bank manager said I would never be able to bank ever again in England."
According to the Bentley Rhythm Ace philosophy, the people who are making the 90's dance floors boogie are far too serious for their job. Where's the pleasure in making music anymore - or does each track have to be able to look into the inner soul and explore the psyche? Bentley Rhythm Ace have made sure the ride has been as much fun as possible - even down to leading their own media astray. "In England we like to tell the papers anything just to see what can get printed - when Richard broke a little bone in his back, when we were parachuting and filming a film clip - the wind caught him the wrong way and he just landed funny. Richard blabbed to NME about it and they came up with this big 'Richard cheats death' headline and made up some story about how he free-falled 2.5 miles without his parachute, and that he almost died - the English press are so funny, they will print anything." I ask about a comment Richard once made to a journalist about taking turns in the toilets to wank over their bank book balance... "We do get strange looks now and then about that," Mike laughs. "When we get discouraged I just think about the time when I worked in a factory pressing copper in Birmingham, earning 100 pounds a week and working six days and I can't moan anymore - you appreciate it all the more and now we spend money like anything." So you've turned into the posh Bentleys now? "No. I don't spend my money on fashion - I still get my clothes from charity shops in Birmingham - I actually hate shopping, after 10 minutes I'm like, this is really crap," he says. How long is this Bentley thing going to last? "I can't think about retiring now - probably five more years and I would be forced to give it in because my body would pack up with all the drugs," Mike says.