As the festivities start to take hold at writewyattuk hq, we best conclude our 12 months of quotes from 2016’s feature/interviews, encapsulated via a series of soundbites. Again, much gratitude to all who responded, and big respect to those who read the rambling results. Click on the names for links to the features.  

July

Road Runners: Geno Washington & the Ram Jam Band, ‘par-taying’ in 2016 (Photo via Steve Bingham)

1960s soul legend Geno Washington on continuing to give it his all in live performances

“I can’t change that. That’s part of me, and I love performing and making people happy. A lot of musicians will tell that you can be achey, have a headache, backache, all that. But when it’s showtime, the adrenaline starts flowing. Yeah, man, you know! The kids are switching on to us, because they haven’t seen nothing like that. There’s no gimmicks, no backing tapes, none of that. This is live … straight from the heart! The Ram Jam Band is geared up to par-tay! Par-tay! Forget about your troubles for that moment, and par-tay!”

Jamaica Smile: Toots Hibbert (Photo: Lee Abel)

Reggae legend and Maytals survivor Toots Hibbert gives advice to young musicians following in his wake

“I’d wish them to listen to music from me … and Jimmy Cliff … and Bob Marley. Young people should listen very attentively and try to write good lyrics and be creative to produce good music. And to do that they have to listen and learn, and pay respect to us – the original singers of reggae music!”

Postcool Customer: Dennis Locorriere, back out on the road in 2016

Dr Hook’s Dennis Locorriere analyses a year in which there were no end of celebrity bereavements

“Hey, with the year this has been, I’m happy to be spoken to rather than about! I’m glad this is an interview and not an obituary. But do you know why it’s so shocking now? Stars used to be around until maybe they were 40 then they thought it was unbecoming and disappeared. You’d see a photograph of them shopping with sunglasses on when they were 60, then you’d hear they’d died. Now they dance right to the precipice – baby boomers like Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, leaping off amplifiers. So when these guys go, we’re like, ‘What!’ It’s sad, but I chuckle a little when people in their 70s are dying, especially those who lived the way that they did! Rock’n’roll takes its toll.”

Pleasure Principal: Gary Numan, planning new releases in 2017

Gary Numan on why we shouldn’t expect him to do many more retrospective anniversary tours

“It isn’t something that will become a regular part of what I do no. My interest is always in what I’m doing next, rather than what I’ve done before. I am obsessed about moving forward, not living on past glories. But I feel my previous reluctance to play much older stuff has often been seen by fans as arrogant selfishness and I regret that, so decided I would back off and be more agreeable about it. My relationship with fans is very important and so these tours of older material will feature again, now and then, in the future. Nothing will change the fact though that the thing that gets me up in the morning, the thing that still excites me, is going in to the studio and writing new music, then taking that on tour all over the world. These retro things can be fun, once in a while, but it’s absolutely not what I see my career settling into. I won’t touch it again for quite some time after this tour is over. The new album will be ready soon and all my interest and drive is leaning towards that.”

August

Time Out: A Crafty Cigarette author Matteo Sedazzari on a fag break

Matteo Sedazzari, author and blogger, on how he felt failed by the education system as a schoolboy

“I was up against it but also very inquisitive, forever asking teachers, ’Why?’ I found, like the kid in my book, school pigeon-holed you. Hand your homework in on time, nice and neat and tidy, and you’re an A-grade student. They were preparing those kids for corporate culture. If a kid was a bit maverick, a bit different … I was fortunate I had such strong belief at an early age. I’m a late bloomer but always knew I could do it. When I left school I went to night-school and got three f***ing A-levels, went back to my year head and said, ‘Look at that! Remember me? CSE failure!’”

Rave Reviews: Author Jenn Ashcroft has earned plenty of critical acclaim (Photo copyright: Martin Figura)

Award-winning author Jenn Ashworth standing up for libraries and the need to maintain them

“I hated high school, and many times when I was supposed to be there, I was actually in the Harris Library in Preston. I remember sitting there one weekday morning, leaning against a radiator reading Melvin Burgess’s The Baby and Fly Pie in one sitting. It was my safe and happy place – a good place to be alone, read whatever I wanted. I was too young to know anything about book hype, the cannon or what books were suitable for a teenage girl of my class and background. So I read whatever I wanted. I cherish those memories, and later on became a librarian because I wanted to help facilitate that freedom for others.”

Meeting Nicky: The blogger with Nicky Weller in the About the Young Idea cafe (Photo: Richard Houghton)

Nicky Weller on why Liverpool was chosen for the highly-successful About the Young Idea exhibition celebrating her brother Paul’s band The Jam’s enduring legacy

“We looked at lots of places, including Scotland, Newcastle, Manchester and Birmingham. But when we came to Liverpool we had such a good response from the council. This wasn’t the original building we were going into, so it was all a bit of a rush in the end, but I’m glad we chose the Cunard. Nothing like this has ever been done in this room, and with the musical history here – The Beatles, Merseybeat, Gerry & The Pacemakers, all those bands – it’s perfect. It’s like a Mecca for music. And if you’re coming here to see The Beatles, you’ve got to come and see The Jam too!”

Celebration Time: Wilko and his band (Photo copyright: Leif Laaksonen)

Former Dr. Feelgood and Ian Dury & The Blockheads guitar legend Wilko Johnson on why we should do all we can to safeguard the future of live music venues in London and further afield

“When me and Norman Watt-Roy started this band around the mid-‘80s, at that moment there were loads of good gigs in London and you could make a living just playing around there – The Cricketers, the Half Moon, The Marquee, The Mean Fiddler, The Powerhaus. There were lots of gigs and lots of live music going down. Then it gradually changed with the dance thing, those live venues started going and the gigs went. What the scene is now, I do not know. I wonder what people are doing now! It’s kind of the ideal situation for rock’n’roll, those kind of gigs.”

Rock Idols: Teenage Fanclub, Here, there and everywhere.

Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake, celebrating being in a rather special band where three members write the songs

“I think that’s been a strength for us. You’re not reliant on one person. We’re talking 10 albums, so around 120 songs upwards – a tall order. We’ve been lucky enough to share that burden. When we make an album we bring around six songs then try to whittle those down, focusing on around four. There’s definitely friendly competition too. When someone brings in a great song, you feel, ‘Wow, I’m really going to have to up my game!”

September

Live Presence: Mark Trotter, right, with David Jakes and Lonely the Brave

Lonely The Brave’s Mark Trotter on having a more introverted front-man in David Jakes

“Dave’s only ever done what Dave does, and people were confused by that initially, seeing this front-man not into jumping around and swinging a microphone around his head. That would never work for us – it’s so contrived. We’ve toured with bands who practise jump-kicks before they play. I mean, really? Come on! It’s not real. Be spontaneous about it! With Dave, all he wants to do is sing and give the best performance he can. And if he had to stand behind a curtain 20 foot away, I wouldn’t care.”

Street Life: Elliott Morris (Photo copyright: Vanessa Haines Photography)

Solo guitar virtuoso performer Elliott Morris on past live links with a certain Ed Sheeran

“Ed and I used to gig-swap all the time. He’d head up to Lincoln one month, I’d go down to London the next. We shared the bill on loads of shows, the last after his first album came out, a Nando’s Festival in London. Only I was designated driver that day and am a veggie, so when I found out we got as much free beer and chicken as we wanted I was a little under-catered for! It was a fun gig though.”

Vapors Trial: 2016’s line-up – Michael Bowes, David Fenton, Ed Bazalgette, Steve Smith

The Vapors’ frontman David Fenton on The Jam’s Setting Sons tour back in 1979

“That was brilliant – our first real dabble into life on the road, going from playing to 20 people or one man and his dog in a pub to 2,000 seaters with The Jam. We each had our own minibus and every time we got to a service station had water pistol fights in the car park. They’d tape our clothes to the ceiling while we were on stage, that sort of thing, while we’d put talcum powder on the snare drum. I’ve got really happy memories of all that.”

Live Presence: Deutsche Ashram’s Merinde Verbeek & Ajay Saggar at Amsterdam’s Oedipus Brouwerij (Photo: Kasper Vogelkanz)

Ajay Saggar on how his Deutsche Ashram project with Merinde Verbeek – a co-worker at Amsterdam’s Paradiso venue – came about by pure chance

“I sent her three songs and the next morning got something back. I listened with trepidation, but was absolutely blown away – a fantastic voice and she totally got it. She said, ‘I loved it. Have you got any more?’ She went on to write all the lyrics and melodies, really fast. We went into the studio and helped develop it with her with extra harmonies and more vocals, tried loads of things, build it up, mixed it and put a lot of work in. And I love it!”

Big Country, 2016. From the left – Jamie Watson, Bruce Watson, Mark Brzezicki, Simon Hough, Scott Whitley (Photo: Paul Green)

Mark Brzezicki on how Scottish outfit Big Country ended up taking on a Slough-born son of a Polish immigrant and his friend, Tony Butler, a West Londoner with Ghanaian roots

“We’re like the bumblebee – it should never be able to fly and should never really have happened, but it did. All by chance, like a cork in the ocean caught by a current, finding itself on an island you wouldn’t expect. It’s a long story, a chain of events after answering an advert in Melody Maker when I was around 18, saying ‘Phil Collins/Bill Bruford style drummer wanted’. I wanted to do something original and the reason I played drums in the first place was Phil Collins – he was instrumental in everything for me. I adored his playing. I was listening to prog rock, fusion, jazz funk, and the king of all that for me was Phil, particularly with his other band, Brand X.”

October

Campbells’ Kingdom: UB40 live (Photo: Martin Porter)

Drummer/songwriter Jimmy Brown, on how UB40’s truly multi-cultural upbringing made the band unique

“I realise now what a privilege it was to live in an area where you could sit on your front doorstep and see the four corners of the world go by. It’s transformed us. It always has been for me, and I’m proud of that aspect of Britain. We were right in it. The people next door had a blues (party) every Saturday night and we were just there – mates together. We’d play with the Irish kids and the kids from Antigua, St Kitts, Barbados … They were the people you were in class with. That’s what cemented the relationships.”

Southern Comfort: The South, with Alison Wheeler out front

The (Beautiful) South’s Alison Wheeler, on how she survives as the only woman in a nine-piece band

“When I first joined The Beautiful South, it was a real education. These guys had been in music all their adult lives. There was something quite interesting, and liberating to see four grown adults acting like children – in a good way. They hadn’t been stamped on or downtrodden like the day-to-day rigmarole of earning your keep. It took me a while to wind down from a full-time job, trying to get on in music. I was very serious but eventually learned life isn’t so serious. You’ve got to enjoy yourself, which was their whole approach to life. When you start on a tour everyone’s really polite, everything’s in its place, but three weeks on it’s like a cesspit. But what are you going to do with a chemical loo and 13 men?”

War Boy: Michael Foreman with a depiction of himself as a lad (Photo: Damien Wootten)

Award-winning children’s author/illustrator Michael Foreman on an enduring love for Cornwall, 55 years after his first visit

“Cornwall is a magical place, one I first learned of from Pop the sailor, a friend of our family during the Second World War, who was from Mevagissey and told me stories of smugglers, pirates and shipwrecks. So yes, I still settle down in front of Poldark on a Sunday evening and take in those wonderful coastal vistas and crashing seas. You know from going there yourself what a magical place it is. It’s timeless. Apart from the pasties and tourists and everything, you can set all kinds of stories there. The landscape doesn’t change. It’s stunning in places.”

Soul Survivor: P.P. Arnold (Photo: Gered Mankowitz)

P.P. Arnold on her 1960s’ London friendship with fellow treasured US import Jimi Hendrix

“Jimi and I were very close. He was my ‘brother’ – he really helped me. I was very shy and never planned to do any of this. I didn’t know how the music industry worked. I was just a young girl who’d come out of this abusive teen marriage, who one morning ended up at Ike and Tina Turner’s house after a prayer. Then I was on the road, then Mick Jagger and Andrew (Loog) Oldham invited me to stay and go solo. And the rest is history. The universe and God work in mysterious ways, because Jimi and I ended up just around the corner from each other when he lived in Montagu Square and I lived right behind him in Bryanston Mews East, and he really supported me. He understood me. We came from the same background, out of the civil rights revolution and into the rock’n’roll revolution of the UK.”

Drum Major: Billy Doherty, loving life with The Undertones in 2016 (Photo: BBC)

The Undertones’ drummer Billy Doherty on broadcasting legend John Peel, the band’s favourite ‘uncle’

“When we did the documentary, he came to Derry for the weekend and we were all worried about what we were going to talk about, how we were going to entertain this man, not least with such a long gap since we’d last met him. But how wrong we were! It was great from start to finish. He talked about Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, David Bowie … You name ‘em, he’d met them! And there was no bragging. He was just telling it as it happened, and we were all empathising with what he was saying. He was telling stories as we were being filmed as we walked through the streets, and so many people came up and were so gracious to him, shaking his hand, saying, ‘John Peel! How’s it going!’ He was just as nice back to them. Then we went to a local bar and there were guys buying him Guinness. The table was covered. I’m not exaggerating – there must have been at least 20 pints. And he drank every one of them as well!”

November

Real Spark: Glenn Tilbrook  (Photo: Rob O’Connor)

Glenn Tilbrook, on how he’s loving being part of Squeeze again after their successful last album, Cradle to the Grave

“It’s a really sparky record and one of the best Squeeze albums. Not only that – I think we’ve got more to come. It’s going to be better. We’re getting better all the time. And that’s such a great place to be. Just being older you get a bit more sensible. It took long enough though, and – after all – pop music is the home of arrested development, I think! But I think we’re good at giving each other space. And we need to do that.”

Blues Masters: Dennis Greaves (second left) in live action with Nine Below Zero

Nine Below Zero’s Dennis Greaves on how his family inspired him to make his mark as a musician

“My Grandad, Alf Hardy, sold newspapers outside Tufnell Park tube station, but had harmonicas, keyboards, Hammond organs, guitars, banjos. He could pick things up and play them immediately. Dad would go and see Matt Munro in a real famous pub, The Boston Arms. He was a bus conductor at the time, and his accompanist was Max Bygraves’ brother. My Dad, my Grandad, my great-grandad and I have all sung in there. And my dad thought he was Al Jolson! I grew up in a house that really adored music, and it was always on. My Dad was a hero of mine, a London taxi driver and bus driver, and bought me my first proper guitar – a Gibson 335. I wasn’t the brightest tool in the box, but as soon as I left school I educated myself through reading, especially by being on the road. Travelling educated me, but my Mum and Dad gave me a fantastic start in life, giving me confidence. I can’t thank them enough for that. They never told me I was rubbish or told me what I couldn’t do. I was dyslexic, short-sighted and couldn’t read or write as good as other kids. But I certainly made up for lost time.”

Camden Tan: Ed Bazalgette, Dave Fenton and Steve Smith at Dingwall’s (Photo: Ashley Greb)

The Vapors’ guitarist (and award-winning director) Ed Bazalgette on an initial approach David Fenton to join the band

“I’d had a band, and me and Howard (Smith) had watched The Vapors. The band we’d been in had split, so I put a pick-up band together. I don’t think we even had a name. We might have informally called ourselves The Parrots. There was a teacher from my school playing saxophone, Howard playing drums, and a bloke playing bass called John. It was a right old mish-mash. We got pulled off the stage after about three songs – the landlord, Tony McManus, wrestler Mick McManus’s son, thought we were shit! We were supporting another Guildford band, doing covers. David was in the audience, saw me, and I got a call about three months later from his then bass player asking if I was interested in auditioning. So fortunately David didn’t think I was shit, and his girlfriend at the time told me he said if we were in a band together we’d make a real impact. So you have to praise that insight!”

Dreaming Head: Hannah Peel has had another amazing year

Hannah Peel, solo artist and key component of The Magnetic North, on her on-going relationship with the music box

“It’s a love-hate thing that started off as a bit of fun with (a cover of) Tainted Love. Every single note is hole-punched on paper and it’s become one of those things I adore doing but takes so long. By the end you feel you’ve wasted a whole day punching holes! But what comes out of that process is really beautiful. I really love analogue synths, and I suppose the music box is the very basics of early computer technology. We rely on that so much, so making music without any cables – just paper and a pencil again – is really something. Even orchestrators don’t tend to use paper anymore – they do it all on a computer. So this feels like you’re touching the core again. That’s why I also use it at the end of this new record – it seems to sum up the childhood everyone goes back to.”

December

Space Invaders: John Robb and Rob Haynes give it their all at The Conti (Photo: Joel Goodman)

The Membranes’ frontman John Robb on just what became of his original bass guitar

“It was stolen out of my house – a complete nightmare, around 1992. It was heart-breaking – it meant absolutely nothing to anyone else. It only ever worked for me. I’m sure they nicked it, got halfway down the street, then thought, ‘What the f*** is that?’ It looks like a stick!’ People would borrow but couldn’t play it. It was so small and a weird shape and it’s hard to get your hand around it. But these days I’d probably still use what I’ve got now – my (Fender) Precision – because it’s a heavier sound.”

Double Trouble: Andy Golding and David Callahan go semi-acoustic (Photo: Joel Goodman)

The Wolfhounds’ David Callahan, trying his best to explain his band’s trademark skewiff guitar sound

“It’s kind of half way between Wilko Johnson and Winged Eel Fingerling (Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band, Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention). It has pop and rock chops but also flies off at angles all the time. But that’s what we wanted. Our early influences were things like that. We bonded over a mutual love of something between The Who and The Fire Engines.”

Album Shoot: Paul Young, sharp-suited in the city during his Good Thing launch (Photo: James Hole)

Paul Young re-examining his pre-solo career days fronting The Q-Tips, and how he learned about stagecraft

“Because we were a seven-piece band we had to work every gig we could get to be able to support ourselves. That’s where I really found my feet on stage, and first had a chance to find my own on-stage personality. That’s something a lot of kids don’t get now. This is the problem. They want fame too fast. All of a sudden they’re up there on stage and don’t know what to do.”

Presenting Passion: John Suchet, ITN newscaster turned Classic FM presenter (Photo: Classic FM)

John Suchet on how his approach to writing about classical composers compares to what’s gone before

“I offer the man as much as the music. I think you’ll find a lot of books on Beethoven and a lot of books on Mozart are all about musicological analysis and the way the dominant chord in the third bar correlates with the blah blah blah! What fascinates me is, ‘Was he drunk when he wrote it?’ ‘Was he in love when he wrote it?’ I always try and portray the man as much as the music. That’s the hallmark of my musical biographies – that by the end you’ll know the man as much as you know the music. I never lose sight of the fact that we tend to treat these composers as gods, putting them on a pedestal. But they were men. They had to live and pay their rent, eat and drink. So how did they do it? And with Beethoven, how did he do that when he was slowly going deaf? That’s what fascinates me.”

What’s Cooking: Jimmy Osmond on the set of Celebrity MasterChef (Photo: BBC)

Jimmy Osmond on why he loves the fact that his superstar days are now way behind him

“That’s what’s been so great! Mostly in the ’70s there were all these screaming teenage girls and whatever. Now it’s so much fun. I’ve done all these reality shows and plays, and now I’ll be on a bowling lane and a bloke will say, ‘Hey Jimmy – good shot!’ or whatever. That’s real nice – nothing crazy, just friendly. People feel they know you and are genuinely nice.”

Booked Up: Richard Houghton

Richard Houghton, on what he unearthed while researching The Beatles – I Was There

“The very first photograph in the book is from Woolton Village Fete, famously the day Paul met John for the very first time.  The photo I’ve included was given to me by someone who was a babe in arms at the time and he’s in the foreground on his mother’s knee while John Lennon can be seen in the background playing with the Quarrymen. The publisher thinks it’s the very first time this photograph has been published anywhere in the world.”

Finally, I could have added favourite albums, books, films and live shows of 2016, but you’ve seen a lot of those mentioned elsewhere in recent weeks. Instead, I’ll leave you with one image, lovingly ‘borrowed’ from the Getintothis ‘beats, drones and rock’n’roll’ website, I felt summed up one of my personal highs, and not just as my eldest daughter and I feature in the photograph (although clearly that helps). It involved The Magnetic North, supported by esteemed author Frank Cottrell-Boyce (a past writewyattuk interviewee, with a link here) at Liverpool’s Central Library for the last-but-one outing of a live set celebrating the Prospect of Skelmersdale album. I was pretty late to this band, so properly introduced myself to 2012 debut Orkney: Symphony of The Magnetic North this year too. But they’re at the forefront of a movement seamlessly fusing atmospheric, sonic landscapes with archive film footage, in a similar manner to fellow favourites British Sea Power, King Creosote and Public Service Broadcasting in recent times. The show itself was a clear contender for gig of the year (with my review here), and took place in an amazing venue at a time when so many more libraries are being lost across the UK. Time to halt that slide, I’d say, looking back to our proud past in order to get a steer on what can be achieved in the future. And on that deep note, I’ll stop and let you ponder.

Taken Up: The Magnetic North, Liverpool’s Central Library (Photo: http://www.getintothis.co.uk/)

So there you go … over and out for 2016. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all our readers and contributors, and we’ll be back in 2017.