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When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the Belladonna Treatment. Formed in Stratton, we play a brand of rock and roll music that oozes punk rock swagger, gothic decadence and the laments of the ardour of Love and of loss. We are the human condition - splayed and placated on a stage. We are the sunken gardens of your memory palace and take as much influence from outside of the musical sphere as we do from within. We sing of all the facets of what it is to be alive - wonder, the marvellous, the forlorn, the savage, the beautiful, the ugly. And we are going to sing for you...
The group was formed by accident when Lee and I were thinking of other things to do. In spite of knowing each other our whole lives and being immersed in the musical experience for most of that time, we'd never actually made any music together. Consumed a lot. But never created, Not together. One summers day we were lounging around in his front room avoiding our responsiblities when Lee played a riff on his guitar. Immediately and in the way that is only possible in music, a melody floated down out of the artists heaven and pleaded to be sung. 3 minutes later 'More or Less a Pleasure' was alive. Just like that. It didn't exist...and then... it did.An immaculate moment of conception, pristine in its perfection. It was to form a blueprint that we haven't really deviated from. Not dramatically. ​
Now whether or not you believe in such things, signs are signs. And the clarity and simplicity with which we wrote that song was - to us - a clear sign. Over the next month or so, as often as we could, we wrote. Well, I say we wrote - the songs wrote themselves. They were dying to be awakened. They still are. Lee was and indeed is, a fertile plain of musical endeavour and his riffs and guitar parts coaxed the melodies and words out of me, so that within a short space of time the Belladonnas cup was running over with songs.
​Our biggest challege was the fact that we live in defferent cities and so we had to find alternative ways of writing but where there is a Will there is a way and where there are 2 Wills there are many ways. Pretty soon after a few live performances as an acoustic duo (yikes) we knew we needed to get a band together.​
Step forward Ian on bass and Stu on drums - both with a huge amount of talent and experience and the required levels of being cool enough for (what was now called) 'the Belladonna Treatment' How could we be anything but on the same page? Afterall we'd grown up together the 4 of us...​
And here we are... the story will keep getting written. It isn't difficult. It writes itself.
The gigs are bringing people out to the shows. People who's lives are intertwined. It's a beautiful thing..​
Someone very sage and wise once said...that the highest aspiration of the human heart is to be of use to othersIt isn't. It's to blow their head off with Rock and Roll music.​
Welcome to the Garden of Eden, baby. ​
We're the Belladonna Treatment.​
From Stratton.​​
Jim, February 2024.
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