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Rage at the dying of the light – back into the world of David Lance Callahan, Dragon Welding, and The Wolfhounds

Posted on November 11, 2021 by writewyattuk

Reading Matter: The Wolfhounds, fully booked, fully switched on and never knowingly under-read

Of 22 acts on the NME’s celebrated C86 indie cassette compilation, The Wolfhounds, while uncompromising from day one, proved to be real slow-burners, given the benefit of 35 years’ hindsight.

While Primal Scream and The Wedding Present found commercial success (the latter still going strong), Half Man Half Biscuit managed both cult status and consistent output, and The Mighty Lemon Drops and The Soup Dragons enjoyed relatively brief flirtations with crossover fame, this innovative Essex outfit shone bright then split, then regrouped and went at it again, all the time retaining that initial passion for the cause.

And David Lance Callahan, frontman of The Wolfhounds as well as a prime mover behind ‘90s trailblazers Moonshake, continues his creative odyssey judging by long-awaited solo debut LP, English Primitive I, the first of two forays into ‘a concoction of apocalyptic British folk, Eastern psychedelia and stunning lyricism’.

The singer-songwriter/guitarist made use of the lockdowns to deliver a mélange of ‘mutant Eastern, West African, folk, blues and post-punk influences’. What’s more, his publicists have good reason to suggest he’s now taken his place ‘alongside cult heroes Robert Wyatt, Scott Walker and Cathal Coughlan as a prime example of seemingly limitless artistic expression’.

His impressive full-length, seven-track LP – with English Primitive II, from the same sessions, next – arrives 40 years after David, whose CV also includes collaborations with members of Stereolab and PJ Harvey among others, set out on the (garage) rocky path from his band’s Romford roots.

I covered a fair bit of that ground in my last feature/interview with David five years ago (linked here), but I’ve since learned more via Neil Taylor’s excellent C86 & All That (Ink Monkey Editions, 2020), the Red Sleeping Beauties chapter great for background on The Wolfhounds and labelmates, friends and allies McCarthy.

In short(-ish), Dave Callahan and Paul Clark (guitar) were at school together, starting out in 1980, soon joining Purples Hearts’ singer Bob Manton and drummer Simon Stebbing – moving away from the Mod revival scene – to express a love of ‘60s garage rock, the four-piece initially playing 13^th Floor Elevators, Seeds and Love covers. The Changelings – as they were – became regulars at The Garage, Mike Spenser’s Hammersmith’s Clarendon Hotel-based outlet. When Bob and Simon moved on, they became The Wolfhounds, moving up a gear in ’85 with the addition of Andy Golding on second guitar, Andy Bolton on bass and Simon’s 15-year-old brother Frank Stebbing on drums, dates following at the Rezz, Romford, its promoter Chris French soon helping them find gigs further afield in the capital, including The Marquee and lots of ‘squats, dingy bars, basements, colleges, and anywhere that would have them’, according to Neil Taylor. The influences were already diverse, from Rough Trade and Postcard post-punk to Julian Cope-touted garage obscurities, ‘50s and ‘60s jazz and pastoral singer-songwriters such as Nick Drake.

Slowly, support slots led to influential NME and Sounds reviews, the band finding kinship in The June Brides’ ‘off-key beat music’, a demo handed to The Pink Label’s Simon Down during one of their gigs ultimately leading to debut single, ‘Cut the Cake’, recorded in November ’85 in Bow along with no-holds-barred ‘LA Juice’, Birthday Party homage ‘Deadthink’ and the more languid ‘Another Hazy Day on the Lazy ‘A’’, the first Wolfhounds track that grabbed me (I’d clearly not heard ‘LA Juice’ then!).

Perceptively, Richard Boon wrote in The Catalogue that they were ‘full of big, reverbed, trebly guitars, swamp-blues vocals, repetitive riffs and heartfelt yearning’, but ‘a little too determined to put the rage into garage’. As it was, Sounds single of the week status followed, The Legend, Ron Rom, John Robb and Mick Mercer among their champions, the band on their way, second 45 ‘Anti Midas Touch’ raising the profile, that among the songs on the first of three John Peel sessions.

Debut LP Unseen Ripples from a Pebble then ensured cult status before they ploughed on in a more rampant style with 1989’s mini-LP Blown Away and the full-length Bright and Guilty, the latter being reissued as a deluxe edition double-LP by Preston label Optic Nerve next year. After one more record, 1990’s Attitude, they were gone, barely five years down the line, but reconvened for a 20th anniversary gig, and since 2014’s Middle Aged Freaks collected their comeback singles, they’ve delivered two more lauded LPs, 2016’s Untied Kingdom and 2020’s Electric Music.

I’ve been lucky enough to catch the bands at various key stages down the years, five times between February ’86 (supporting That Petrol Emotion and The Mighty Lemon Drops at the afore-mentioned Hammersmith Clarendon) and late January ’89 (at Euston Drummonds, with Lush third on the bill), then twice more at The Continental, Preston, in more recent times.

As it turns out, they were back in live action last weekend at 229, Great Portland Street, in London’s West End. Not a venue I recall from my days out and about around the capital, I told him.

“Yeah, most of the ones I used to go to are closed now. They’ve got flats or shops on them.”

Sad, really. We’ve spoken before about venues like the Sir George Robey, Finsbury Park, long since gone, although in that case people’s memories of times and happening bands caught there seem to have made it far more attractive in the memory than the reality was.

“It was insalubrious! It had plenty of good times within its walls though, even if the scenario wasn’t so attractive.”

Last time I saw The Wolfhounds was at August’s Preston Pop Fest three-dayer, a Lancashire visit which unfortunately ended with double-jabbed David, despite daily tests, succumbing to the dreaded virus.

“Ah, yeah, me and the missus got stuck in Preston for a few days with Covid.”

It clearly hasn’t curtailed his love for the venue, though, with both band and solo engagements lined up at The Continental next weekend and in April 2022 (details of both events to follow further in). And so to the cracking new debut solo album – was English Primitive I your lockdown project?

“Partly, there were a few things already recorded, but yeah, once we weren’t allowed to leave the house I basically finished off more than a double-LP’s worth of material and got Tiny Global to agree to put them out, which is nice, so there’s more stuff from the same sessions in the process of being mixed now. So it all came together during lockdown, when there wasn’t a lot else to do other than catch up on my books, film and write songs really.”

Also a freelance nature writer, a permit from Natural England allowed him ‘some fresh air’, carrying out ecological surveys around East and North London. But the solo LP clearly kept him focused too, and opening track ‘Born of the Welfare State Was I’, seems rather apt after all that clapping on doorsteps and raging debates about the future of the NHS and related state provision in this ‘untied kingdom’ of ours. Fellow Essex lad Billy Bragg always talked about things with such passion, acknowledging it was the NHS and the Welfare State that gave so many of us who perhaps would have struggled otherwise to make an impact through education, good health, a benefits system, and so on. Was this your way of expressing similar sentiments?

“Yeah, there’s a lot of that, and about how I literally do think – like it says in the first line of the song – it’s the very peak of civilisation, the Welfare State, we’re one of the richest countries in the Western world there’s ever been, and can afford to support the people who are falling behind or who aren’t as able as others. The danger is, as heard in the song and the accompanying video, that under the surface we’re taking it too much for granted, and gradually – ever since Tony Blair got in – the Governments have been chipping away at the NHS and other parts of the Welfare State, farming them out to private companies, who certainly won’t be considering their clients with too much empathy.

“But as I discovered this morning, because I’ve got a friend who’s a doctor, it says in the song about – half-jokingly – how we don’t have scurvy and rickets anymore. But we do! They’re back. So we need it more than ever, at a time when the whole thing is being eroded by vested interests.”

Steps Taken: The Wolfhounds in more recent years, and no less fire, with David Callahan out front

That opening song includes lines from Bo Diddley’s ‘Pills’, that ‘rock’n’roll nurse going to his head’, and I confess that while maybe I should pretend I first knew that song from the New York Dolls’ 1973 version, going back from there to the original, in fact, that was a song I first got to enjoy via boozy Saturday afternoon affairs watching Wolfie Witcher and His Brew at The Clash’s old local, the Caernarvon Castle in Camden, in the mid-’80s.

“Well, at least it wasn’t the Lurkers’ version!”

Which version did you hear first?

“I can’t remember which, but it was around the same time in the ‘80s. I was a garage rock aficionado, so liked Bo Diddley and the New York Dolls. But the whole point of it is a folk music thing where the odd line is passed on down the generations, and it seemed amusingly, ironically appropriate to the song and popped into my head when I was writing it. I can’t even say why it’s there. It just happens sometimes. You have to justify them afterwards. You write lines that sound good, then sometimes, subconsciously, they fit, or you have to rip them out, write something else.”

Going briefly back to Preston Pop Fest, I pondered over how The Bluebells’ ‘Young at Heart’ should have been the anthem of the weekend, but maybe it was The Wolfhounds’ ‘Middle-Aged Freak’. And I mean that in a celebratory sense. Some of us aren’t quite as young as we think we are now, but still retain some of that old punk spirit. And I don’t see you among the contented pipe and slippers brigade.

“I’m enjoying that. We’ve started to get that. Sleaford Mods supported us early on, when they started, and when I went to see them after they got big, I was jealous of their audience, because there were people of all ages just letting rip, not giving a shit how they looked. And then we started to get that – mosh-pits of middle-aged people! I’m quite pleased that in some way our music sort of lowers people’s inhibitions like that … ignoring that it’s all bulky middle-aged men, which is a bit off-putting for everyone else – you don’t want to get crushed by this greying juggernaut!”

True. In fact, there was almost an invisible barrier between the uninhibited dancers and the next wave of fans at The Continental, if I remember right. Meanwhile, the other song that really grabbed me on this occasion – even more so than the previous time I saw you perform it – was the epic ‘Across the River of Death’. And in a sense, isn’t that almost your homage to ‘Caroline’ by Status Quo’, with that monster riff that builds and builds?

“Ha ha! Yeah, there’s possibly a subconscious element of that tune. I mean, the actual … it’s on a drone, so there’s only a certain amount of tunes you can do over a drone, really, but yeah, I mean, when I was nine or 10 years old, I liked ‘Caroline’, ‘Down Down’ and all that stuff. In a way it was kind of priming people for punk rock a couple of years later. But really, the big influence in the song is Jacques Brel and things like that. I don’t want to get all highfalutin, but it’s like Rabelais and things like that. It’s a broad sweep of like … everything in society and how it’s all going to die, you know. Ha!”

Well, I realised it was a bit deeper than ‘Caroline’, but …

“Is it really, though? Is that deeper than an attraction between a man and a woman?”

Good point. We’ll draw a skew-whiff line under that. And getting back to the album, who joins you on that opening track?

“That’s got Daren Garratt, who drummed in The Fall and The Nightingales. I’ve known him since he was in Pram. We were label-mates with them in Moonshake and loved the band. He’s always been a great drummer and this was an ideal opportunity. I couldn’t get all the guys in The Wolfhounds to play, otherwise it would have been a Wolfhounds record and would have spoiled the idea, and he’s a someone I always wanted to work with. And he said yes immediately.

Early Days: The Wolfhounds, back in 1986, firing on all cylinders in their spell on The Pink Label

And I got an old mate of mine, Terry Edwards, to play flute and trumpet, and he always changes things for the better. And I had a regular female voice in Katherine (Mountain) Whitaker, who I’ve known five or six years. I always thought she was an underrated singer, possibly because she was in a very obscure indie band – Evans the Death, a good band but I guess they never really got far. I think she’s got a very distinctive voice. I always thought it was a shame people couldn’t hear her a bit more. And she was ideal, because our voices blend very well.”

How far back does your link with Terry Edwards go?

“I’ve known him since I was 15 and he was 19.”

I always associate his arrival as the Norwich years, with The Higsons and so on. But you’ve clearly known him longer.

“I remember him going off to university. Basically, when I was 15, I was a little punk mascot around all the older punks. I had lots of older friends then.”

I’m seeing you as a bit of a Mick Jones character now, the young kid on the scene, in his case following the likes of Mott the Hoople up and down the country or hanging out at London venues, again something of a mascot to established faces on the scene.

“It wasn’t quite Mott the Hoople for me, but these were the days when well-known bands would turn up to play your youth club on 50/60-day tours, so you’d get to see Alternative TV and people like that down the road. I’d see (Terry) there in the crowd, and there were probably only 100 people at those gigs, so you’d end up knowing most of them. Some went on to be quite well known, like Mick Herbage, the guitarist in Department S, he was in the same crowd and playing in some of the bands. Purple Hearts were called The Sockets then, before they turned into a leading Mod revival band. And I would say the best one, along with The Chords.”

It’s a music community ethos that still survives, and you’ll find David among those taking part in a live tribute to Pat Fish, aka The Jazz Butcher, following his recent death, at an event at Camden’s Dublin Castle on November 27^th. And Pat was among the artists who played Preston Pop Fest in late August. Did David get to know him well?

“We weren’t best mates, but one of our mates from Romford, Paul Mulreany, ended up drumming in The Jazz Butcher, and Martin Stebbing, who played bass on our second album, ended up driving and being their sound engineer in the States. Whenever they were on tour and did a London show, they’d sleep on our floors and sofas out in Forest Gate. So I knew that from that, then over the years we’d bump into each other. He was always a nice chap, and wrote very witty, catchy songs.”

Is there a clear demarcation in your mind as to what’s a David Lance Callahan song and what’s a Wolfhounds song, or is it just purely what you’ve done with them?

“There are grey areas and there are occasional solo songs by me and by Andy on Wolfhounds LPs, but I think it’s meant to be a band. It’s not like The Beatles (White Album) where everyone’s doing their own solo project. There are often songs I write that don’t seem to be appropriate, and either I want musicians on them but don’t think they would suit the band’s playing style or would stretch it to breaking point. Or they’re just things I want to perform on my own. I very rarely write personally, but the sound of them can be more intimate.”

Daff Punk: David Lance Callahan has delivered solo album, English Primitive I. Photo: Fela Callahan

Mention of Daren Garratt took us on to The Fall, but you’ll have to wait for that book project for all that. Needless to say, there was a band among many more than inspired his own path, although he was careful to share the love on that front.

“It was the whole scene at that time. It was amazing. There were hundreds of amazing punk and post-punk bands, and all these people contributed in some way, all blowing your mind every time a new record came out. Everyone from the Sex Pistols to The Slits to even tiny little bands like …And the Native Hipsters. Listening to the John Peel show between 1976 and 1982 was just a mind-blowing experience. It continued to be, but it was this one scene just producing all these …

“The first time I listened to Peel was probably February 1977, and he had sessions by The Damned and This Heat. And I still say to this day that I thought both bands were punk. I had no idea who wasn’t. To me, punk could be loud rock’n’roll and it could be just weird noise that sounded like nothing you’ve ever heard before. And I think that’s a good summary of what punk should really be.”

Rather than the established retrospective view today. It was about attitude and much more than safety pins, spiky hair and all that, yeah?

“Yeah, not what they seem to call punk nowadays, which appears to be trainee lawyers and publishers revelling in their ineptitude and lack of ambition really.”

So, there’s not going to be a booking for you down at Rebellion at some point?

“There’s nothing wrong with that. I mean, Rebellion is largely old farts in punk bands, but a lot of them are good. I was sad I didn’t go a few years ago and see The Weirdos and people like that who’d never played here before. The kind of punk band I’m talking about is I guess those playing on the indie pop scene that just sound really unimaginative to me. They treat it like a hobby, and I don’t want to hear people doing it as a hobby. I want it to sound like it’s their whole life.

“I don’t have any problem with bands like The Undertones and The Specials playing their big hits. When I’ve seen those bands, they’re still putting everything they’ve got into it. And we still play some of our old stuff from time to time. I don’t really have a problem with that. I just have a problem with laziness and lack of attitude, really.”

Will English Primitive II follow pretty soon? You say you’re at the engineering/mixing stage at present.

“Well, you probably know there’s a big backlog in vinyl pressing. Ideally it would be out in the Spring, but quite possibly it’ll wait until October. I hope not, but the likelihood is that the backlog of pressing plants will mean there’s delays, but essentially by the end of December it will be ready.”

And in the same way I asked about a demarcation between this album and Wolfhounds products, is there a demarcation between parts one and two of the solo project?

Brainwaves Transmitted: David Lance Callahan takes the Pete Shelley route to ESP. Photo: Fela Callahan

“They’ll sound different just because the songs on them are different, but they’re all from the same sessions, so I have to say yes and no because, again, there’s going to be some more long-form things. It will sound less Eastern influenced, perhaps a bit more psychedelic, but only because of the songs that have made it onto each one. There are three or four that were left off the current LP because I didn’t think they would go as well as some of the others, and after discussions with the record label we said we’d use that as the basis for volume two, then I recorded a whole bunch of new stuff earlier this year.”

There are hints of psychedelia, psych-rock or whatever you want to call it on English Primitive I. There’s a Velvet Underground feel on ‘Fox Boy’ for me, as if it’s a lesser-known Velvets song.

“I’d rather it sounded more like a better-known Velvet Underground song! But I guess so, maybe that’s what you get with a bit of fuzz guitar and some reverb. That’s what you end up sounding like, whether you like it or not! Yeah, I bought this cheap digital tanpura-tabla online from India, plugged it in, found the right settings, then jammed along with it.”

Well, it works. And because you mentioned that crossover into folk, maybe that’s something people haven’t previously spotted among The Wolfhounds’ catalogue, but it’s there on songs like ‘Goat Man’, something I could hear Nick Drake sing. You’ve gone somewhere else with that.

“I do like Nick Drake, but the idea behind this, if you strip everything off Wolfhounds songs, they kind of sound quite folky anyway. When we went up to Preston previously {for the UnPeeled Xmas show in 2016, another corker} and only two of us made it, we {David and Andy} were playing the songs semi-acoustically, and lots of people said it sounded like a weird folk band. So it’s not too big a stretch to go to that from this, but I’m just as much influenced by people like John Lee Hooker. I’m not a big acoustic fan, but someone like John Lee Hooker could sit there with his cheap amp and cheap guitar and play this distorted kind of solo stuff – that’s kind of the way I feel most comfortable doing it.”

I was going to mention ‘She Passes Through the Night’ had a Howling Wolf meets Revolver-era Beatles, but maybe John Lee Hooker would have been more accurate.

“Well, the fact that you can’t quite put your finger on all these things is pleasing to me!”

And there’s a real epic feel to the eight minutes-plus of ‘One Rainy September’, also involving the Iskra Strings (John Smart, violin; Emma Owens, viola; Verity Simmons, cello; James Underwood, violin), arranged by Dan Fordham). Was that something you envisaged, or did it just become that epic?

“There were probably a couple more verses! It was kind of pared down to as short as it would go, which is true of a lot of these things. I quite like the breathing space – being able to do seven or eight minute songs. And most people who like it say it doesn’t feel like seven or eight minutes, which is what you’re trying to achieve. The trad rock ideal is something like ‘Stuck Inside of Mobile’ by Bob Dylan from Blonde on Blonde. And if you get a riff that’s good enough, you can just keep going round it for 10 minutes and no one cares, because it’s great. And that’s a brilliant example of that kind of thing. I don’t want to sound like that, but he kind of opened it up in pop music for having long songs and I don’t see why we should step back, as long as they’re good. And I felt these would be worth people’s time and effort in listening to them … and hopefully it wouldn’t be too much effort!”

As for ‘She’s the King of My Life’, I see that as an out-and-out love song, but with trademark Wolfhounds wonky guitars, yeah?

“Ha ha! It’s not really a love song. It’s kind of about the beginning of a relationship and feeling kind of insecure and unsure, but done in a kind of sado-masochistic kind of way!”

What came first – your solo project or bandmate Andy Golding’s Dragon Welding project?

“Both, because to varying degrees we weren’t in bands for a long time, particularly as we’re being parents, which doesn’t allow much time for that kind of thing. We were both writing in our spare time, wondering what the hell to do with it. We managed to use up a lot of stuff in The Wolfhounds, but a lot of the ideas weren’t appropriate for that. I had stuff perhaps more suited to Moonshake. So it was inevitable that we’d have to find outlets for stuff perhaps not so suited to the band.”

That’s something else I wanted to put to you. I know it was never properly a stable of artistes, but if you think of the C86 bands, there was always real diversity between you all, but when I think where you’ve gone with various projects, I’m struggling to think of others among that roster who covered so much ground, taking into consideration not just The Wolfhounds, but yours and Andy’s solo projects, Moonshake, involvement with Stereolab, and so on.

“Well, we’re reissuing Bright and Guilty via Optic Nerve next year, a deluxe edition double-album with B-sides, outtakes and so on. And there’s stuff there where one song sounds like hip-hop and has (The) Pop Group influences, then there’s weird sort of psychedelic ballads, and I’d forgotten about it, to be honest, in any depth, and was quite pleased how good it sounded so many years on. So yeah, even when we started out and could barely play, and people fingered us as a kind of garage indie band, we were listening to John Coltrane and hip-hop as well as the Nuggets and Pebbles albums. It was never limited. We were just limited by our abilities rather than our tastes, and ever since it’s been a way of incorporating wide taste. I’ve got very eclectic listening habits.”

There were kinships though, with McCarthy one such band that weaved in and out of your world.

“Yeah, and I still think Malcolm Eden’s one of the best lyric writers of his generation, yet no one seems to know him. He’s incredibly intelligent and witty and it’s kind of sad he didn’t get to continue after McCarthy much, although Stereolab of course were an excellent band.”

Talking of Stereolab, it would have been Mary Hansen’s 55^th birthday recently, which really makes you think, seeing as we lost her so young (she died after being struck by a car while riding her bike in London in December 2002).

“Yeah, and I like all the Stereolab albums, but I think a little bit of their soul dropped out when she died. I think they’d probably say that themselves to a degree. But their recent reformation gigs have been triumphant.”

And because we were talking about that wide canvas of The Wolfhounds, could you have seen where Matt Deighton would head next after his spell in the band, with Mother Earth and beyond?

“Matt was and remains to this day an excellent guitarist and played excellent stuff when he was in the band. He was only in the band for maybe six to nine months, but always really liked things like Humble Pie, stuff like that. He was always a bit of an early ‘70s hard rock and folk guy, so the fact that he joined a band that looked and sounded like that wasn’t too much of a surprise! And that was never really where we were heading.

“But listening back to Bright and Guilty, his playing on that is fantastic, and despite the relative straightforwardness of a lot of his stuff, he’s a big Beefheart fan and stuff like that as well, and you can hear that in his playing with us.”

And once English Primitive II is out, will you head back to The Wolfhounds and another band album?

“We haven’t really discussed that, and because it’s a group effort it was quite hard to do anything during the lockdown. But now we’re coming out of that, we’ll probably start writing new stuff, I suspect. I’ve probably got more band-oriented stuff lying around if I think about it. And I’m sure Andy has too.”

In the meantime, you return to Preston for Saturday, November 20th’s Garage Peel all-dayer, a ‘superlative edition featuring the cream of British garage rock acts championed by legendary DJ John Peel’, a ‘3.30pm until late’ event also involving Glasgow’s The Primevals and Inca Babies, among others, with The Wolfhounds playing a special set reflecting their own garage rock inspirations, I hear.

“Yeah, apparently so! We’re having the first rehearsal for that on Wednesday, so we’ll discuss what we’re going to do, but yeah, it might be a little more trashy. We shall see!”

David and bandmate Andy Golding – in his Dragon Welding guise – then return to The Continental the following afternoon, Sunday, November 21st, their sets to be drawn from their respective solo LPs (Andy’s 2019 Dragon Welding LP recently followed by Lights Behind the Eyes on the Dimple Discs label). And then there’s April 22/24’s Vernal Equinox, the pair again delivering solo spots and contributing to a full band performance.

“Yeah, and most excitingly, there’s also Martin Carthy, a career-long excellent artist, and Stick in the Wheel, probably one of my top-10 favourite current bands. We’re looking forward to that a great deal. And Alison Cotton, the viola player who performs on ‘She Passes Through the Night’ on my LP, is playing with her band, so that’ll be good too.”

You can catch up with all the latest news and releases from The Wolfhounds, David Lance Callahan and Dragon Welding via The Wolfhounds’ Bandcamp pages. And for full details of the above-mentioned November shows and April events at The Continental in Preston, Lancashire, seek out Tuff Life Boogie’s Facebook events pages. Regarding the November events, tickets for Garage Peel are £12.50 via Skiddle, The Ferret and Action Records, with two-for-one deals at the latter outlets, and £5 on the door or via Skiddle for Sunday’s solo sessions.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Andy Golding, Bright and Guilty, C86, Daren Garratt, David Callahan, Dragon Welding, Electric Music, English Primitive, Garage Peel, Iskra Strings, John Lee Hooker, John Peel, Katherine Mountain Whitaker, Martin Carthy, Mary Hansen, Matt Deighton, McCarthy, Pat Fish, Paul Clark, Preston, Preston Pop Fest, Purple Hearts, Romford, Stereolab, Stick in the Wheel, Terry Edwards, The Anti-Midas Touch, The Continental, The Jazz Butcher, The Primevals, The Wolfhounds, Untied Kingdom, Velvet Underground, Vernal Equinox | Leave a comment

Truly making his mark – in conversation with Seth Lakeman

Posted on November 4, 2021 by writewyattuk

On Deck: Seth Lakeman, playing live again right now, to support LP Make Your Mark. Photo: Tom Griffiths

Seth Lakeman is back, and on the evidence of new LP, Make Your Mark, the last 18 months did nothing to blunt his creative prowess.

Emerging from the long days, weeks and months of lockdown, the celebrated indie-folk singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist’s latest album – out in a fortnight on CD and in digital format, and next month on vinyl – is his 11^th studio offering since going solo in 2002.

Released on his Honour Oak Records label, the new record’s 14 songs were recorded at Middle Farm Studios – as namechecked in my recent Tim Keegan /Departure Lounge feature/interview – in his native Devon earlier this year as restrictions eased, 44-year-old Seth self-producing.

“The pandemic gave me a real determination to come out musically stronger, and I really dug deep into myself. Being able to record and play with the band again was really quite spiritual.”

Most associated with fiddle and tenor guitar, but also a dab hand with banjo and viola, as well as that distinctive voice, it’s now 16 years since Seth’s Mercury Music Prize nomination for second album Kitty Jay, his solo career following a spell alongside siblings Sam and Sean as the Lakeman Brothers.

Their debut LP landed in 1994, when he was 17, the trio then joining forces with Kate Rusby and Kathryn Roberts as Equation, while Seth also raised his profile guesting on sister-in-law Cara Dillon’s award-winning eponymous debut LP before going it alone.

Kitty Jay was his first record to make true headway, but 2006 follow-up Freedom Fields was the first certified gold, and as well as his new studio offering, he’s celebrating the latter’s 15th anniversary with a deluxe CD and vinyl reissue, with both records showcased at live dates this month.

First though, a quick story about serendipity, and how the day my eldest daughter headed down by train from Lancashire for a university open day and fact-finding mission around Plymouth, Seth happened to be launching his new album via a live web-stream from the pitchside at Home Park, home of his beloved Plymouth Argyle FC.

Seth, from the West Devon village of Buckland Monachorum, performed ‘The Giant’ and ‘Side by Side’ with bandmate Alex Hart, amid a little crowing about the Pilgrims being early League One leaders.

And one week on, I was through to the man himself, who was so wrapped up in pre-tour rehearsals that he’d forgotten I was calling. But he obligingly broke off so I was able to chat with an acclaimed crossover folk star on my radar since first taking a punt on Freedom Fields at Leyland Library not long after its release, clearly someone with discerning taste having ordered it in.

That third record helped build on his cult following and find a wider audience, Seth subsequently named Folk Singer of the Year and Freedom Fields awarded Album of the Year at 2007’s BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, that long player becoming one of the best-selling traditionally-based folk records in the UK.

Tours with The Levellers, Billy Bragg and Jools Holland helped spread the word, and in my case, I sought out Kitty Jay next, then headed back to 2002 solo debut The Punch Bowl before shelling out on 2008’s Poor Man’s Heaven, keeping close tabs ever since, the clincher perhaps May 2009’s band show at the wondrous Minack Theatre, Porthcurno, Cornwall, albeit with this punter having to make do with the DVD experience.

My own love of his part of the world was a factor, admittedly, but it was Seth’s creative approach to song storytelling and his musicianship that truly struck the right chords. So, have the last 15 years since Freedom Fields – inspired by one of the turning point battles of the English Civil War, the people of Plymouth standing united against the Royalists – flown by?

“It has really. I’ve been pretty busy, and I’ve released a lot of material, but I’m still finding a source of inspiration. I’ve always loved writing songs and the whole process. And yeah, it does feel like it’s flown.”

We could go back even further to The Punch Bowl. Was that you finding your feet?

“Yes, finding my voice, really, working out if I could be a singer and was it something I could achieve. I knew, melodically, I was a violinist and was trying out guitars. But yes, it was an experiment really.”

Did you see Kitty Jay as your true arrival? Or was there an earlier point where you you’d written a song or a whole album that made you realise, ‘I can do this’, and accordingly carried an inner belief?

“I think that was the first time I really understood the process of making a whole album, where each song is like a chapter of a book. The full concept of an album also struck me, that’s where the Dartmoor legends and stories came from, and that’s the arrival of Kitty Jay.

“Lots of things were coming into play there, such as learning to sing with a violin, learning about the tenor guitar, things like that … experimenting with sound, really.”

Are you an avid reader? It seems – from the sheer breadth of subject matter for songs – that you’ve got this thirst for knowledge and want to share it. And I guess that’s what folk music was intended for, traditionally, being educational as well as entertaining.

“Exactly, sharing stories about real people and their efforts, and celebrating them in song. That’s something I’ve always loved. Singing about where you come from, making sure people are aware of that – you don’t want to lose sight of your roots. So many times we step over into Americana, which I have, and we love to do that, but it’s always good to find those stories right here, back at home.

“And, yeah, I used to be a big reader, but then I had kids, so it’s not so much as it used to be! But I’m always keen to find stories. I was a big reader for the Mayflower project I was part of. That involved lots of research.”

Wild Woodsman: Seth Lakeman now has 11 albums bahind him now, after 19 years solo. Photo: Tom Griffiths

That research led to early 2020’s A Pilgrim’s Tale, telling the epic tale of the Pilgrim Fathers on the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower voyage, a tie-in tour involving 10 towns and cities associated with the voyage, ending at Plymouth’s St Andrew’s Church – where the latest tour started this week – just before the first lockdown.

I mentioned my daughter’s Plymouth move, and it was only when we were looking to find rented rooms nearby that I spotted the location of Freedom Fields. But I guess I’m just one of many who’s learned more about Devonian – and Cornish – folklore and history through his songs.

“Ah, that’s good, and that’s all part of it, you know, trying to show people Dartmoor and the surrounding area, Plymouth, Cornwall … the full West Country tour!”

Some of that history is far more recent and still raw in certain cases. And as I mentioned Poor Man’s Heaven, that LP includes Solomon Browne, Seth’s tribute to the crew members of West Cornwall’s Penlee lifeboat, lost at sea 40 years ago next month. In fact, he told me about his pride at being part of events for the official opening of Solomon Browne Memorial Hall in Mousehole in 2017, recalling conversation there with the coxswain of the Penlee crew, who lost his father in the disaster.

As for the new record, from opener ‘Hollow’ – with shades of Gray for me in Seth’s vocal … David Gray, that is – through to closing number, ‘Constantly’, Make Your Mark grabs you from the off. Familiar yet fresh, we’re soon reeled in, early highlights including ‘Love Will Still Remain’, which kind of fires you out of the cannon, Seth’s fiddle to the fore, and the harmonising with Alex adding another dimension on next offering, ‘Bound to Someone’. Meanwhile, ‘The Higher We Aspire’ was a clear choice as the album’s lead single, Seth at his most subtly commercial, in another fine example of well-crafted indie-pop folk.

Make Your Mark sees Seth tackles the environment, love, death, and self-belief, trademark Lakeman themes, and while I’d not had a proper chance to wallow within when we spoke, I soon had, and I’m suitably impressed. He’s clearly still making his mark.

Down the years, there have been songs about miners, ships’ crews, soldiers, artisans, craftsmen, and plenty more working-class heroes and villain, fair maidens and returning prodigal sons, his tales often timeless, not concerned with any specific periods of history or elements of traditional folk.

“You try and jump back and forth, in as much as I love history and I love language. I like writing in that traditional way too. But I also love Americana, West Coast, I love pop, I love rock. On Poor Man’s Heaven and Hearts and Minds, there’s lots of riffing and heavy drums. All sorts.”

While my tastes always varied, folk was something I struggled to take on board for a long time, until perhaps the influence of The Men They Couldn’t Hang and Celtic folk – The Pogues, The Waterboys, and so on – finally lured me. In more recent years I’ve grown far closer to that world, not least through finding the beauty in Sandy Denny-era Fairport Convention and Nick Drake, right through to Americana, Bruce Springsteen’s Seeger Sessions providing another turning point. And Seth’s music stands up there with the best of all that in my mind.

Understanding the way all those influences play off each other was key to my appreciation, the BBC/RTE Transatlantic Sessions productions among the factors helping illuminate those links, and that’s where I caught Sam Lakeman and wife Cara Dillon among those featured. But I was also pleased to hear him say that his own influences were certainly not just drawn from the folk roots world.

Barn Storming: Seth Lakeman and his band put through their paces, and back out and about again this month

“Oh, crumbs! I mean, I love Public Service Broadcasting. I love their new album (Bright Magic), and was rocking out to that, and I’ve just introduced my kids to AC/DC and all those heavy bands … and obviously Zeppelin. My son was in the car and I’m playing him ‘Kashmir’ and ‘Good Times Bad Times’. And I was playing some classical guitar music the other night. And jazz. I mean, Stephane Grappelli is one of my biggest heroes.”

Now he’s mentioned ‘Kashmir’, I’ve another image of him, blasting that out with his children as he drives deeper into that dramatic Dartmoor scenery.

“Ha!”

Seriously though, that makes me re-evaluate tracks like the brooding, powerful ‘The Lark’ on the new LP. I could hear a Gretchen Peters-like vibe before, and now hear the homegrown dark blues of Robert Plant too, with a similar feel on next track, ‘Side by Side’. Perhaps it was always there, yet never quite sinking in.

There is a link, a phone call from the Led Zep frontman on New Year’s Day 2017 leading to input on Plant’s Carry Fire LP that year and him joining his tour as part of the Sensational Space Shifters band and as tour support, further engagements together following in 2018 in the US and Australia.

And while domestic responsibilities (Seth and Cornish-born wife Hannah have twins aged eight and a five-year-old) may have come even more to the fore in recent years, he still managed to turn around his ‘lockdown album’, the latest released through Honour Oak Records, the label name inspired by a tree close to where he was based in Whitchurch around the time of 2012’s Tales From the Barrel House LP, marking the boundary of French prisoners on parole in Tavistock from Princetown on Dartmoor during the 1803/4 Napoleonic War, and also where money was deposited in exchange for food during an 1832 cholera outbreak.

And will his live band help him echo what he’s pulled off on the new record when it comes to the tour?

“Yeah, the same guys are on the road with me. That’s what we’re doing here (rehearsing – I think that’s him subtly saying he best put the phone down soon and get back to it), and I’m very excited at the prospect of being able to get back out there.”

As well as the afore-mentioned Alex Hart on added vocals, the band also comprises Benji Kirkpatrick (Bellowhead, Faustus), on bouzouki, banjo and mandolin; Toby Kearney, principal percussionist at Birmingham Conservatoire, on drums; and Ben Nicholls, on bass, the latter having worked with Seth for many moons.

“Yeah, 20 odd years now. A long, long time!”

Are you in regular touch with brothers Sam and Sean (the latter having produced his first four solo LPs)?

Looking Forward: Seth Lakeman, set for a return to plying live again, 18 months on. Photo: Tom Griffiths

“Yeah, all the time. We did a Lakeman family gathering show not long ago, back in the summer. For Beautiful Days, and that was really successful.”

Thinking back to having that security of that band of brothers, so to speak, if you could go back 20 years to just before The Punch Bowl came out, is there a certain bit of advice you’d offer yourself, maybe making yourself a little less anxious about the solo career path ahead?

“Yeah, there’s always that point about not being too precious about music. I might have been a bit too worried about the ‘folk police’. That’s something I wouldn’t want to be so worried about now. I really wouldn’t!

“And I’d tell young musicians it’s all there to be used, the tradition. It’s all about creativity, you know, and pushing boundaries. I think that’s the key to all kinds of music.”

Going back to your roots – Seth began playing music with his parents and brothers at an early age – I’m guessing you grew up with folk. How do you think the state of the future of roots music as a proper music of the people is at this point in time?

“It feels like it’s at a bit of a turning point. Because, you know, we’ve come out of something that is so extreme, for human beings, at that point of socialising and connection. Music has a real opportunity now to unite and almost heal people, show them there’s a really positive way forward.

“I think that’s where music has a real opportunity. So yeah, the people’s music and music in general, I think, has that great opportunity.”

And with that, Seth was away, back to his rehearsals, those UK dates ever closer (with a link to a tour video here), this accomplished artiste having truly made his mark these past two decades, and showing no sign of letting up yet.

Make Your Mark is set for release on Friday, November 19th in CD and digital formats, and on Friday, December 17th on double vinyl. You can also order a signed Freedom Fields deluxe reissue now on CD and double vinyl – limited edition coloured and black – all with exclusive bonus content, including unreleased tracks and rare demos, with a signed art print from selected stores via this link. And for more information, head to Seth’s official website.

And while the tour is now underway – opening dates at Plymouth St Andrew’s Church and Exeter Cathedral behind him – he ventures further afield these next couple of weeks for shows at Carmarthen Lyric Theatre (Thursday, 4^th November); Guildford G Live (Friday, 5^th November); Bexhill De La Warr Pavilion (Saturday, 6^th November); Yeovil Westlands (Sunday, 7^th November); Leeds City Varieties Music Hall (Monday, 8^th November); Oxford SJE Arts (Tuesday, 9^th November); Birmingham Town Hall (Wednesday, 10^th November); Newark Palace Theatre (Thursday, 11^th November); Bath Forum (Friday, 12^th November); Cambridge Corn Exchange (Saturday, 13^th November); Southend Palace Theatre (Sunday, 14^th November); Milton Keynes The Stables (Monday, 15^th November); London, Islington Union Chapel (Tuesday, 16^th November); Manchester Stoller Hall (Wednesday, 17^th November); and Buxton Opera House (Thursday, 18^th November). For tickets, head to Seth’s website live dates link or this SeeTickets link.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged A Pilgrim's Tale, Alex Hart, Ben Nicholls, Benji Kirkpatrick, Cara Dillon, Cornwall, Devon, Equation, folk, Freedom Fields, Honour Oak Records, Kate Rusby, Kitty jay, Lakeman Brothers, Led Zeppelin, Make Your Mark, Penlee, Plymouth, Plymouth Argyle, Poor Man's Heaven, Public Service Broadcasting, Robert Plant, Sam Lakeman, Sean Lakeman, Seth Lakeman, Solomon Browne, Stephane Grappelli, Toby Kearney | Leave a comment

Up, up and away – a late introduction to Magic Roundabout

Posted on October 30, 2021 by writewyattuk

Collage Education: The future awaits Bolton, Manchester and Nottingham noise merchants Magic Roundabout

Once upon a long ago, there was a band – described by their modern-day label as ‘criminally-unheard Manchester noisemakers’ – that borrowed its name from a hit UK children’s TV show that itself started life in a very different form in France.

In the case of this particular ‘80s post-punk indie outfit – originally from neighbouring Bolton – though, fame was not forthcoming. But enough people appreciated them down the line for their memory to live on.

And now, three and a half decades after Magic Roundabout’s first live outings, The White Stripes’ Jack White’s US label Third Man Records has released their debut LP, Up.

According to their press, ‘Like so many other disenfranchised kids in the heady days of the mid-‘80s, Magic Roundabout came armed with leather jackets, charity shop instruments, singles by The Fall and Buzzcocks, good haircuts, a healthy Velvet Underground obsession and a little psychedelic inspiration.

‘Influenced into existence at early gigs by The Jesus and Mary Chain and Shop Assistants, The Roundies wanted to change the world, or at the very least make some noise, shake things up and be a part of the happening’.

Moving into a house in Nottingham in early 1986, they began rehearsing, recording and gigging, with memorable shows following as support to The Blue Aeroplanes, The Pastels, Spacemen 3, Loop, My Bloody Valentine and Inspiral Carpets. And rumour has it that Noel Gallagher roadied their final show.

Just one song was released though, ‘She’s a Waterfall (Pts. 1 and 2)’ appearing on Oozing Through the Ozone Layer, a compilation cassette put together by future Pulp guitarist Mark Webber in his fanzine days. There was also talk of a flexi-disc, but that never saw the light of day, and by the end of the ‘80s the band had all gone their separate ways, their recordings lost forever.

Or so it seemed, Magic Roundabout’s 1987 recordings recently unearthed by Pale Saints singer/bass player Ian Masters for Third Man Records and given the ‘treatment’ by Warren Defever, the resultant album heralded by a brushed-up version of that prior-mentioned track, ‘She’s a Waterfall’ (its accompanying video linked here). But is their resultant, much-delayed debut album 34 years too late or perfectly steeped and presented at just the right moment, as their label suggests?

With that and many more questions needing answers, I tracked down Magic Roundabout survivors Linda Jennings and Nick Davidson for an online video interview, and we were soon on to the subject of The Shop Assistants, the Edinburgh indie outfit they saw at Blackburn’s King George’s Hall and who proved a huge influence on them making that step up from imaginary to real band.

Nick: “When we saw them, we were like, ‘Whoah!’

Linda: “It was a case of, ‘We’re not worthy!’. They were great and had that quirky sort of pop thing.”

While The Shop Assistants were part of the C86 scene, named after the NME compilation that helped spread the word about so many emerging indie bands from that era, the mystery to me on hearing Magic Roundabout’s recordings now is that – for an outfit at times carrying a Girls at our Best joining forces with the Mary Chain feel – Alan McGee didn’t seek them out and sign them to Creation Records. Surely they’d have been right up his street. How did he miss them?

Linda: “We didn’t really have a quality recording. Just this demo, which was a bit naff on a cassette. We did get one to Tony Wilson, when he was watching a band at The Boardwalk, where we were rehearsing. But he was quite cold on the night. I didn’t get anything back off him. He was a bit smug and nonchalant.”

Nick: “We took turns giving out demos, usually me and Linda. But didn’t really send demos of anything on this album. We were recording really fast, and by summer ’87 we were so into what we were doing that we didn’t have so much time to think about where we were going.”

Linda: “We weren’t chasing anything. We were playing gigs, supporting people, thinking, ‘Wow, we’re playing with them!’.”

For so many bands I love, there was what some saw as a lack of ambition, but sometimes it was just about enough to feature alongside other bands you loved, get on John Peel’s show, and make a couple of singles, rather than landing five-album deals. Anything else was a bonus.

Also, I suggested to Linda and Nick, maybe when they approached Tony Wilson, he’d already found his new direction. Besides, that wasn’t what they were about, that whole Madchester scene. Creation would have made for a good fit though.

Linda: “Yeah, definitely.”

Nick: “There wasn’t really a scene in Manchester, at least not music of the same kind. There wasn’t really anyone else into the same stuff as us. We were friendly with Inspiral Carpets, they were really good to us. But we had more in common with King of the Slums and Dub Sex, that sort of band.”

Velvet Love: Nick Davidson, back in the day with Magic Roundabout, looking forward to an LP release date

I was on the London and South East scene at the time, and got the impression at the time that when the A&R men went to Manchester, they were more likely looking for another Stone Roses or another Happy Mondays.

Nick: “We were a little bit before that as well …”

Linda: “We split up at the wrong time! We should have stayed together.”

I was very much into That Petrol Emotion at the time (I still am, of course), yet you could argue that they never got the kudos they deserved until it was too late, being touted as an influence by bands like My Bloody Valentine after they finally broke through.

Nick: “I saw them {My Bloody Valentine} on my 18^that The Boardwalk, with Dave Conway singing. I loved what they became, but I loved them then too. Great band. But a lot of the bands we liked were seen as a bit lame at the time, like Spacemen 3, My Bloody Valentine …”

Two examples of bands perhaps better appreciated further down the years.

Linda: “I think people were a bit behind that vibe. It’s now seen as cool, but back then in our second-hand clothes, we didn’t want to follow the mainstream at all, and were always trying to find another band to listen to. But our influences were also ‘60s bands like Love, and obviously the Velvets.”

I hear the latter on tracks like the lead single, not just the Nico-like vocals, but the way it’s put together, not least with those guitars.

Linda: “I just wish it had been in tune!”

Don’t get me wrong, but as a half-baked bass player of a garage band that never quite left the garage, I can listen to a couple of those tracks and think, ‘That could have been me!’. But rough and ready as it seems in places, there’s definitely plenty of spirit captured on those recordings. Do they sound different now Third Man Records have polished them up?

Nick: “Yes and no! It’s really good mastering, but Warren kept in touch with us and was keen to not mess with it, really. But a lot were second generation tapes anyway.”

Linda: “My cassette copy that got used for this, they tried to master it to get a good copy, but it still had some of the hiss on it, and it was so difficult. But he sent what he’d done to Third Man, and they managed to take away all the hiss. We were like, ‘How did they do that?’. But there are tiny fragments that you could never recreate on that original cassette.”

Nick: “And mastering is a dying art, as I understand it.”

So how did it come to this? Was it a case of a missing tape unearthed, or is that just record company spin and some romantic notion?

Linda: “A bit of a romantic notion.”

Nick: “We’re not sure where some of that came from, but we played in Leeds in this upstairs room at the Three Legs pub, one of the roughest then. It was around April/May ’87. We supported Loop that night. They lost their licence the next day, because it was so loud!

“There were only about 20 or so there, but Ian {Masters, his band Pale Saints hailing from Leeds} liked us, approached us after, and we swapped addresses. We’ve been friends since. He’s been a great supporter of the band.”

At this point, Linda disappears, and before I have a chance to work out how I’ve upset her, she returns to show me the original cassette, labelled catalogue number 18, apparently put her way by Nick after the band split. Why did they split?

“We were together for around two years, but for around nine or so months it was really intense. For some mad reason we decided we’d live in a band house, moving to Nottingham. We just thought that was what bands did … like The Monkees! We left Manchester, because we didn’t like the Happy Mondays and all that shite! But it was the death of us really.”

Linda: “Yeah. It was all, ‘Your turn to wash up!’, ‘No, you do it! I’m making tea!’. It was like The Young Ones.”

Nick: “We were 18 or 19. We had no social skills. We had rehearsals in the house, brought dustbins in and played them.”

Linda: “I missed all my friends as well. I was homesick for them … not my parents.”

Why did you choose Nottingham?

Linda: “I think Nick just stuck a pin in the map!”

Nick: “We did actually get quite a lot of material that we didn’t record. But living together put the mockers on it all, really. The last thing we did together was ’Song for Gerard Langley’, the B-side of the single. That was recorded there.”

Linda: “I think that’s of a better quality, the way we recorded it. Showed some promise. If we’d stuck in Manchester, maybe …”

I was intrigued by that Gerard Langley link, not least as the frontman of The Blue Aeroplanes – and past WriteWyattUK interviewee – also gets a mention on mammoth LP closer ‘Alice’s Paper Plane’. And it turns out, their first gig was with the cherished Bristol outfit, as depicted in Simon Beecroft’s splendid comic strip creation telling their story (far better than I can, probably) up to the time Karrie Price joined the band.

Nick: “That was our first gig, and it was a grand one. It went really well. They were lovely. We couldn’t have asked for a better gig. We didn’t know them. I hadn’t even heard of them. But they were brilliant.”

Linda: “Me and Paul, the bass player, went to Glastonbury that year, and saw them there.”

Ah, Glastonbury Festival ’87. I was there too. Amazing, weren’t they.

Linda: “Yeah, and I saw Stump there, and Julian Cope, with his weird mic. stand. We were sleeping in the car, and I had a Walkman to record on. I recorded Julian and quite a few others … until my batteries ran low.”

Stump were also great, though somehow I missed Julian Cope. Perhaps he was on that Friday evening, before New Order, while we were still waiting in Castle Cary for my mate Steve’s smashed windscreen to be replaced. Another abiding memory of mine though was Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction’s van getting stuck in the mud, left there and eventually torched.

Linda: “I’ve got a black and white photograph I took of that! An iconic shot.”

I wasn’t venturing too far beyond London back then, and assume most of your dates were north of Birmingham.

Nick: “We got down to Bristol. Rocker from The Flatmates put us on a couple of times, promoting gigs there and in Birmingham. But not London. That’s perhaps one of the reasons … I found a diary and we had some gigs set up that never happened, including one with Spacemen 3 in London.”

Linda: “We played with Ozric Tentacles in Birmingham …”

Nick: “That was a gig! A tough punk crowd. But we went down alright once we’d got through a couple of songs.”

I imagine you were a rather intense outfit live. Did you tend to end – as on the LP – with ‘Alice’s Paper Plane’?

Nick: “Sometimes that was the only track we played! I don’t know why now, looking back. But when we supported The Darling Buds in Bristol, that went down like a lead balloon!”

I never leave gigs early if I can help, but half-way through that I would have been looking furtively at my watch, worried that I might miss the last bus or train.

Nick: “Yeah, we cleared a few places!”

Linda: “It does go on and on and on! I think that’s where we had differences … and split. I wanted to play tunes, while Nick wanted to be more experimental. There didn’t seem to be any middle ground between us.”

That approach works for me. Take the Velvets with Nico. A mixture of a couple of styles. Proper chemistry.

Nick: “Well, we never hid the fact that we were massive Velvets fans. I still love them.”

Linda: “Classic tunes. You don’t really get anything like that. And I love the Warhol thing.”

Nick: “We wouldn’t have dared say that then though. You’d just get slated … although it’s as obvious as anything.”

Linda: “And the title track on this record is about Andy Warhol’s death.”

Nick had just turned 19 when the band split, having been friends with bandmate and fellow co-founder Paul Chadwick since school. Meanwhile, Linda turned 20 in July ’87, the band’s oldest member along with later addition Karrie, who came in to play violin and extra guitar. And while it was Nick and Paul’s first band, Linda had played guitar from age 10 and seen service elsewhere.

Linda: “I ended up having classical guitar lessons at school and was singing in a choir, doing three-part harmonies. And me and a friend would play guitar in our bedroom, learning songs. I’d go up to Horwich Folk Club when I was 15 and 16. And Nick and Paul lived in Bolton.”

Nick: “We started in Bolton in ’86, but there was no real scene there, so we shifted over to Manchester, and The Boardwalk was key to us. I found in the back of the (Manchester) Evening News that there was rehearsal space there. And it was cheap. When we started rehearsing there, they gave us membership cards and we got in to see everything for free.”

Linda: “There were some great bands rehearsing there. Nico was supposed to be rehearsing there in ’87, James were there, and needed a bass player at the time. And if I were a bass player! And the Mondays rehearsed there.”

I think James co-founding bass player Jim Glennie, on board since 1982, might take issue with that. In fact, it may have been a guitarist they were looking to recruit. Either way, she missed out. How about The Fall (of whom Jim Glennie was a big fan)? They rehearsed there too.

Nick: “We never saw them. We’d be looking around for Mark E. Smith though. Paul later ran a newsagent’s in Reddish, and Mark would rehearse there. He’d come in asking for 20 Embassy No.1, every rehearsal!”

Were you Fall fans?

Nick “Oh, massive! That was the only band in Manchester for us. To me, I’d come to think they were better than The Velvet Underground as time went on, lyrically and … they seemed to fore-shadow so much to me.”

Linda: “Massive fans! It’s just that character of Mark E. Smith. And his accent. Manchester … with an arr! Just awesome. In a way, I didn’t think it was that Manc. It’s just how he intonated the lyrics.”

Nick: “And in my experience, Manchester was the sort of place where no one likes each other. It’s very competitive, but that’s maybe just typical Mancunian.”

Linda: “I think they’re a bit more hard-edged in how they sort of deal with people. Scousers are more friendly or comical.”

As for what happened next, Nick’s now in Shipley, bear Bradford, and Linda’s back in the North West, while it turns out that bandmates Paul and Karrie took another direction and went on to become breakbeat specialists.

Nick: “I trained as a nurse in Leeds and Wakefield, and that’s what I did for the next 30 years. That’s partly why the record’s coming out now. I retired a couple of years ago and had a bit more time, thinking surely we could license some of these tracks. That’s how the project started rolling. But I always kept involved in music, working with Ian and on underground stuff. And Linda’s certainly been active.”

Linda: “I joined another band who needed a singer. We were called Your Ticket Explained. We didn’t last long! I was going out with the guitarist, but then started going out with the bass player, and married him … so the guitarist split the band up! Just one of those things. But I stayed in music as much as I could.

“At one point I was going to a poetry group, doing paintings, singing at blues and folk nights, and got asked to sing with this jazz band on Sundays, a jazz breakfast at the Old Angel … mostly for people with big hangovers coming in for a big breakfast to drown their sorrows from the night before.

“I was also in this rock’n’roll band, playing guitar, while I had an 18-month-old (child). That got a bit too hard, but I carried on doing gigs on my own and found a popular music college course and ended up moving north to go to Salford Uni, ending up in bands up here.”

So you’ve now got the Pennines between you?

Nick: “Yeah, but we’ve worked together for the last 20 years. I got back in touch as I was doing some recording, asking Linda to do some vocals. And we’ve recorded on and off for years. For the past 10 years we’ve also had this project called The Objects, with a recent-ish album available on Bandcamp. And we like writing together.

“A bit like The Fall, if it’s me, Linda and your granny, it’s Magic Roundabout! And Paul and Karrie have been involved with dance music – once rave came along, then jungle – called Backdraft, with the label Botchit & Scarper. And we’ve all kept in touch, pretty much.

“We did lose touch with Nicola (Mckenzie) and Maria (Gomez Brown), who (both) played tambourine, but managed to get in touch again with the album coming out. And we’ve had people send us some songs we’d forgotten about, on tape … so yeah, things are started to come back to us!”

And will there be live dates to help promote the record?

Nick: “We’re looking at that at the moment. Depends if anyone will pay us, really. We’re a bit old to do it for nothing anymore! But yeah, hopefully.

“We’ve also been having a think about trying to finish off some of the things we didn’t manage to. By the end, we were listening to Love all the time, and Nuggets, stuff like that. And I’ve bought an organ in the last year.”

Fringe Benefits: Magic Roundabout’s Paul, Nick and Linda waiting for the world to catch up with them

For more about Up and how to order a copy, head here. And for more about Magic Roundabout, check out their Bandcamp link and follow them on Facebook.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Alan McGee, Backdraft, Bolton, Glastonbury Festival, Ian Masters, Inspiral Carpets, Jack White, James, Julian Cope, Karrie Price, Leeds, Linda Jennings, Loop, Magic Roundabout, Manchester, Mark E Smith, Mark Webber, My Bloody Valentine, Nick Davidson, Pale Saints, Paul Chadwick, Spaceman 3, The blue Aeroplanes, The Boardwalk, The Fall, The Flatmates, The Shop Assistants, the Velvet Underground, Third Man Records, Tony Wilson, Up, Warren Defever, Zodiac Mindwarp | Leave a comment

Making a vinyl connection with the Bunnyman – back in touch with Will Sergeant

Posted on October 22, 2021 by writewyattuk

Last time I saw Will Sergeant, I was barely two feet away from him on a Sunday night in the snug bar of The Continental, Preston, Lancashire, thrilling to the garage/surf punk spectacle and hearing sensation that is Michael & the Angelos, the ‘60s cartoon-ish alter-egos of equally-mysterious Liverpool band The Kool Aiders.

That was at Tuff Life Boogie’s Preston Pop Fest in late August, with Echo & the Bunnymen’s guitar hero as enthralled as the rest of us – barely a couple of dozen as it turned out, the rest of the festival-goers back in the main room, waiting for The Bluebells to bring the curtain down on a happening indie pop weekend.

Word was that when the organiser told the band he’d head back through and drum up a few more punters, frontman Bob Parker (also ex-Walkingseeds) wasn’t so bothered about numbers, clearly preferring a low-key approach.

“Ah! A good night that, and it’s a great place, The Continental.”

I reckon my ears were still recovering from chief Kool Aider Bob and his band a couple of weeks on. Do you two go back a long way?

“Me and Bob? Oh yeah, years. I played some stuff with (his previous band) The Mel-o-Tones and did lights for them once or twice. And I’m The Hawk.”

Tune into Michael & the Angelos’ website Radio Hour episodes and that’ll make more sense, if you’re not yet hip to that particular trip. Besides, any words I write won’t do justice to this amazing sonic happening. Highly recommended.

“It’s a great idea. I’m always saying he should get someone in like Matt Groening, referencing all the ‘60s, ‘70s and even the punk stuff.”

You clearly still enjoy a bit of dirty rock’n’roll and garage rock alongside an appreciation of the likes of Love, early Genesis, and all that.

Bunnymen’s Return: Mac and Will are set to be back on the road again soon. Photo: Alex Hurst

“I love all that stuff – that classic record period from the ‘50s through to the ‘80s. It’s kind of what I’m about really. And I love records, so I’m chuffed they’re putting all these LPs out on vinyl again. They’ve been going on about it for years, and everyone else seemed to have their records coming back out on vinyl.”

That’s our excuse for a chat, the re-release of the classic first four LPs by Echo & the Bunnymen, from the years 1980/84, available again on vinyl from this weekend.

Formed in Liverpool in 1978 with Will on lead guitar, Ian McCulloch on vocals and rhythm guitar, and Les Pattinson on bass, Echo & the Bunnymen were soon joined by Pete De Freitas on drums. The rest is history.

Debut 7” single ‘Pictures on My Wall’ c/w ‘Read It in Books’ was released via Zoo Records in 1979, the A-side then appearing on first album Crocodiles in 1980, cementing the band’s reputation amidst a growing wave of post-punk outfits, the NME describing it as ‘probably the best album this year by a British band’. Ultimately breaking into the top-20, it garnered much critical acclaim.

They followed that with the release of the Shine So Hard EP in 1981, recorded live at Pavilion Gardens, Buxton, then second studio album Heaven Up Here the same year, the band’s first UK top-10 album, going on to win the 1981 NME Best Album award. Considered slightly darker, Heaven Up Here was produced by Hugh Jones and was well received by critics and fans, highlights including ‘A Promise’, ‘Over the Wall’ and ‘Show of Strength’.

Then the Bunnymen’s cult status was transformed into mainstream success in 1983 with the release of third LP Porcupine, produced by future Lightning Seeds creator Ian Broudie, their best chart performances following, ‘The Cutter’ reaching No.8 in the singles charts and the LP No.2 in the album charts, soon certified gold.

And 1984 brought fourth studio album Ocean Rain, regarded by many as the band’s classic opus, recorded in Liverpool and Paris, incorporating a 35-piece orchestra, award-winning composer Adam Peters – still a close friend of Will – scoring the strings for an album best known for classic singles ‘Silver’, ‘Seven Seas’ and ‘The Killing Moon’.

Heading into Cornwall recently, dropping my youngest daughter off to start at university, I saw the sign from the A30 near Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor for Warleggan/St Neot/Mount, the way to Carnglaze Caverns, where the cover of Ocean Rain was shot,an extra copy back in the day giving me a chance to Blu Tack that iconic photographic image by Brian Griffin to my bedroom wall, Brian’s photos and Martyn Atkins’ design also featuring on the three previous LPs. Perhaps I should arrange a pilgrimage one day, take a boat out and stab a sorry heart in the water with my favourite finger, in a Mac style.

“Ah, I think we stayed in Fowey – tucked away in this little guest house – when we were doing that.”

Will’s been on the mind a fair bit this last couple of years, having raised his social media profile somewhat to mark the release and success of Bunnyman: A Memoir (Constable, 2021), retelling part one of his life story, from formative years growing up in Melling – an outlying Liverpool district back then classed as within Lancashire, not far from where he still resides – through to the early days of the band. Is he hard at work on part two now?

Distant Echo: Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant, 40-plus years after their first Bunnymen antics together

“Yeah. I’m getting all my research together at the moment.”

Are you re-immersing yourself in that next era (with Pete de Freitas on board by that point)?

“Yeah, I find I can travel back in time in my mind, remembering what we were wearing, the sort of things we were influenced by, what we were into, how we recorded, all that. It’s amazing what can be dragged up.”

Is it a cathartic experience?

“It’s nice, like having a time machine. With the first one, a lot of it was about being a kid, and that was great, going back to then and what we used to get up to, all those scallywag things we used to do.”

You’re not so far from that patch now, around 10 miles from your Melling roots, right?

“Yeah, if that. I just like it round here. When we were bigger, in our heyday – I was going to say massive, but we were never massive – loads of bands moved to London, and it was like, ‘Why move to London?’. It was full of fakers.

“To me, London seemed to be too many people scrambling around. We were trying not to do that. We turned down more things than we did. Even if there was some band on down there we didn’t like the look of, or they had the wrong trousers on or something. ‘We’re not going on with them,’ y’know. ‘They’re shit!’. London felt a bit like that, everyone too desperately trying to impress the local A&R man and all that stuff.”

There was a lot more money being thrown at bands then, it seemed. Those of you still playing all these years on seem to have a far healthier attitude, playing for the right reasons – loving being in a band, playing live and making music, rather than chasing chart-topping status and vast sums of money. Competition doesn’t seem to be such an issue.

“Yeah, it’s not really like that anymore. It’s not a game, anyway. There was always a bit of rivalry between us and people like U2 … although I think they won that one! Ha.”

Speaking of whom, breakthrough Irish band Inhaler played an Action Records promotion in late summer at the afore-mentioned Continental, and catching footage of them at Reading Festival shortly after, I felt seeing frontman Elijah Hewson in action was like watching his dad in U2’s early days.

Booked Up: Will Sergeant proudly displaying the first instalment of his memoirs, with number two on its way

“We share a roadie with them, and we’ve met them a couple of times. They’re a really nice bunch. Dead cool, like. And it’s a difficult track to follow, isn’t it? I’ve seen them live, and they were good.”

From February onwards, Will should be back out on the road with the Bunnymen again, with 20 live dates lined up for a classic band who managed 20 top-20 UK singles. Which made me wonder, for all his cool demeanour, was he ever secretly thrilled about the prospect of chart hits, Top of the Pops appearances, and all that?

“Only once. I think it was for ‘The Cutter’. Rob Dickens at the record label had loads of stuff he’d been given in his office, like a Pee-wee Herman bike with flat tyres. Me and Les were disgusted that the tyres weren’t even pumped up. We loved Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.

“He also had – just leaning against the wall – an Andy Warhol Electric Chair print. I said, ‘That’s great!’, and he said, ‘Oh yeah, someone gave me that’, or he bought it for buttons or something. He said, ‘I tell you what – if your single gets to No.5, you can have it’. So I really wanted to get to No.5 … and I think it got to No.7, so I hit the post on that one. And I think he would have given it me, he was a man of his word.”

It actually reached No.8, the first of three Bunnymen top-10 hits. Not bad for a lad born on the Lancashire side of Liverpool. And going back to those roots, Odyssey style, I mention to Will how Status Quo’s Rick Parfitt would often return to his childhood address on my old patch in Woking, Surrey, gazing at the house where he lived from his car, re-igniting memories. Is that the case with Will and Melling, taking a walk or drive down Station Road, looking at his family home?

“Yeah, and the weird thing is, our house was the shittiest in the road – towards the end of Dad’s life, her and Dad’s life had fallen to bits – but someone’s bought it, done it up, and it’s now the poshest house in the street, extended and everything. It looks like it doesn’t belong there.”

No blue plaque to follow? No chance of the National Trust coming in, as they did with Forthlin Road and Menlove Avenue for Paul McCartney and John Lennon’s homes further into the city?

“No, it’s a completely different house now. You wouldn’t recognise it.”

If you had the chance to go back and be a fly on the wall for Echo & the Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes sharing the bill at the legendary Eric’s in Liverpool, late ’78, what do you think you’d make of each band?

“Well, we weren’t the competent players we became. I think the Teardrops could play a lot better than us. Mick Finkler was great on the guitar and Julian (Cope) was obviously a really good bass player. I don’t know what I’d think, but …”

You clearly had something about you.

Big Mac: Ian McCulloch has something about him, says bandmate Will Sergeant. Photo: Alex Hurst

“Yeah, with Mac up front and everything. He’s sort of got it, hasn’t he, you can’t really deny it. He’s got something. As a frontman, if you can bottle that … like an arrogance … an assuredness, he exudes it.”

Thinking of the vinyl reissues of the early LPs, do you still have and play the originals? I recall Noddy Holder once saying he lent someone a copy of his first LP with Ambrose Slade and didn’t get it back, and he didn’t have one for years.

“Our records? There’s loads I haven’t got. Half the time, they put things out and don’t even send us them. There was one that came out not long ago with sunflowers on the cover. I never got that.”

The day I spoke to Will, I was hoping the postie would knock on the door with a copy of Will’s Bunnyman, but I was still waiting when we spoke.

“Well, Costco have got it cheap! The cheapest I’ve seen. No VAT.”

Recently, I read Steve Hanley’s entertaining, informative Fall memoir, The Big Midweek – Life Inside The Fall, and there’s a mention of a meet-up between your bands in Liverpool, around 40 years ago, Mac and his old pal Mark E. Smith trading insults and cutting repartee, while Steve made small talk with Les and new Radio 1 DJ Janice Long.

He also revealed how he got home and put on Heaven Up Here, suggesting he could play Les’ parts and join you. It seems he felt he might have had an easier life in your band. Do you think he would have?

“Yeah. I met him the other day, actually, when I did a book signing and talk with Dave Haslam in Manchester at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation. We had a chat in the bog! I’m set to do another with John Robb at the Louder Than Words festival. I think with Marc Riley and Steve we’re all going to be out for a curry later. It’s gonna be a hoot, that night. Nice lads.”

That date with John Robb – on Saturday, November 13^th, at Innside, First Street, Manchester, with ticket details here – sounds like a winner, judging by their conversation for John’s Louder Than War website in July (linked here). In fact, John has contributed to my forthcoming Fall appreciation, and Will too has good memories of seeing The Fall.

“I loved The Fall. They were just different, weren’t they, kind of like … they weren’t really punk, but they weren’t anything and didn’t want to be anything. They were their own thing. And I loved Mark E. Smith. He was funny as fuck!”

Was there a particular period you liked above all others?

“I bought all the records for maybe 10 years. They kind of drifted off from there. Live at the Witch Trials was great. I loved the cover – the pencil drawing. Pendle’s not so far from here, really, and it’s got that sort of weird, dark satanic mill kind of feel. Kind of odd, that, places like Saddleworth Moor and Holcombe Hill, spooky kind of areas. The Fall almost tapped into that with the area they were based, and it played into his lyrics.

“And I love the way he used to use people’s names. Like ‘Taxi for Mr Nelson!’. That was great. The only ones now doing something slightly similar are Sleaford Mods. Yeah, The Fall were great.”

When did you last play live, and where was that?

“Erm, 2019, I can’t remember where.”

Records suggest it was at Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh with the Bunnymen on December 18th, 2019. Have you missed all that?

“Er, it’s a weird thing with playing live. It’s a lot of pressure, a lot of anxiety. After a few gigs you get into a flow though, and it becomes okay. You stop worrying. But it’s a lot of worry for me. Is it going to work, will I get all the parts right, will we get the sound correct, not too loud and not too quiet?

“And because I have loads of effects and things I play with, it’s not just playing the guitar. It’s pressing on loads of pedals, making sure you’re in the right place at the right time. And tuned up. It’s like Pressure Central. But once you’ve done a couple, it kind of eases and becomes natural. And I’m going to have to play soon, because all my fingers have gone soft.”

There has been a long gap … not as if I’m trying to add to your anxiety on that front.

“Well, I’m frightened anyway.”

Has the lockdown been a good time for your artwork too? Or was the writing all-consuming?

“I’ve done a bit. I got into doing collages for a while, just for the fun of it really. I started the writing before the lockdown. That sort of came initially from doing …. these records have been re-released before by a smaller label that licensed them, with these fancy booklets. And those liner notes kind of started me off on the writing thing.

“Around 2013, I think it was, I started a science fiction story. I got to about 17 chapters, and it was all about a world where instead of industrial technology, it was more bio-genetic. I got deeply into it, then that film Avatar came out, and I just thought, ‘Fucking hell, this is too similar!’. But I might revisit it. And I’d love to do short stories. I love John Wyndham, Ray Bradbury, James Herbert, all that.”

As for the memoirs, part two will cover from Pete’s early days with the band. Up until when?”

“I might go up to the end of Heaven Up Here. That’s a couple of records, loads of touring, Europe for the first time, all that stuff. That was the first time I’d ever been abroad. To Belgium, a place called Plan K, these sort of hipsters running these nights. Joy Division were on the week before.

“A Certain Ratio, us and The Teardrops went over and did it, in this old sugar refinery. I’d never seen anything like that, thinking you could do anything you liked in Europe – get an old factory and turn it into a gig without much money or interference from authorities. It seemed to be a place that was open.”

Records suggest that was in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek on January 26^th 1980, with William S. Burroughs, Buzzcocks, Cabaret Voltaire and Scritti Politti among the previous year’s guests there, and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark on 12 days earlier than the Bunnymen. And such happenings are something this up’n’coming generation of bands won’t be able to experience at this rate, post-Brexit. It would cost too much to get over and play, with too many new bureaucratic hoops to jump through.

“Yeah, I don’t know what’s going to happen there.”

Last time we spoke, in early 2015, you told me you weren’t a big reader and you’d rather put a record on. You seem to have proved yourself wrong on that front.

“I’m not much of a reader. I’m better with an audio book in the car, driving around, or on dog walks with the headphones on. “I’m listening at the moment to Shantaram (by Gregory David Roberts), about an Australian who breaks out of jail, ending up in Bombay, embroiled in all sorts in these shanty towns. It’s brilliant, and my mate Adam Peters is doing the soundtrack music for a series. They’re in Thailand filming at the minute. He’s asked me to help with odd bits.”

Room Service: Will Sergeant on a return to Belgium, where he had his first overseas trip, in 2003

As you mentioned Australia, how’s Bunnymen bass player Les doing? Is he still Down Under?

“He’s alright. I’m in touch with him most days, via WhatsApp or whatever. He’s always sending me jokes and pictures. It looks amazing, where he lives. In Mornington, Melbourne, on this big bay. They go sailing and all that. He does trials riding too.”

With that, our time slot is well and truly done, but Will tells me we should catch up at the Conti again soon – where he also caught Can’s Damo Suzuki and Gnod fairly recently – and revealed a few details about another musical project he has lined up.

“I’m toying with the idea of going out and doing ambient gigs on my own. I’ve got to plan it out, work out what I’m going to do, get some projections together. There’s a bloke round here with an organic farm and he built this baboon house in his back garden, made for Knowsley Safari Park. He’s made it into this groovy space. He’s a bit of a hippie. They do yoga in there and sound baths.

“I was saying you could put things on, like poetry readings or ambient nights. I was going to do something acoustic with our keyboard player, do some of his tunes and some of mine, then I was thinking of something more electronic, with a table-top set-up, something we used to do years ago, under the name Glide. But keep it minimal.”

By then, your fingers may be more hardened up again.

“I probably wouldn’t be playing the guitar. Last time I did the Glide stuff, I played guitar with a screwdriver and a metal rod. I’d thrash the shit out of it! Using the screwdriver like a slide, with open tuning … maybe a bit violent for a gentle ambient night.”

The first four Echo & the Bunnymen LPs (Crocodiles, Heaven Up Here, Porcupine and Ocean Rain) are available from today (Friday, October 22^nd) on heavyweight black vinyl and limited-edition coloured vinyl, with further details via https://lnk.to/EchoandtheBunnymen_Vinyl.

Meanwhile, Mac, Will, and the current line-up will be playing a full UK and Irish tour in Spring 2022 to celebrate Echo & the Bunnymen’s 40-year careers. For ticket details head here. And for all the latest on the Bunnymen, head to their website or keep in touch via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Posted in Books Films, TV & Radio, Music | Tagged A Certain Ratio, Adam Peters, Andy Warhol, Bob Parker, Brian Griffin, Bunnyman, Carnglaze Caverns, Crocodiles, Dave Haslam, Echo and the Bunnymen, Glide, Heaven Up Here, Ian Broudie, Inhaler, Kool Aiders, Les Pattinson, Liverpool, Louder than Words, Matt Groening, Mel-o-tones, Melling, Michael & the Angelos, Ocean Rain, Pee-wee Herman, Pete de Freitas, Porcupine, Preston, Preston Pop Fest, Rob Dickens, Steve Hanley, The Continental, The Fall, The Teardrop Excplodes, U2, Will Sergeant | Leave a comment

Celebrating BOB’s Berlin Independence Days 21/10/91

Posted on October 21, 2021 by writewyattuk

“Sink back into time, I’ve been hypnotised; and meanwhile my time’s not my own.”

Thirty years ago today, one of the bands that provided a key component of the soundtrack of my 20s stepped on stage at Berlin’s Quartier Latin as part of a cross-city live event celebrating the first anniversary of Germany’s reunification, for a show also starring LA alternative rock outfit Hole and cult London post-punk group The Monochrome Set.

Three decades later, BOB’s set – broadcast live on national radio in Germany that day, 21/10/91 – is commemorated by Berlin Independence Days, which was due to be out in June as a limited-edition 10-track vinyl-only LP before a backlog in vinyl manufacture saw the release date put back, the delay leading to a decision to reward those who pre-ordered with a subscriber-only exclusive CD version.

As co-frontman Richard Blackborow put it earlier this year, “We’re proud of this record. We were on great form and, luckily, we were professionally recorded on the night by clever German recording technicians who broadcast the show live on Berlin radio. No one has heard it since, and we were lucky enough to escape with the multi-track tape of the show. Simon (Armstrong) and I mixed it during lockdown last year and we’re chuffed to bits with the results.”

I spoke to BOB drummer Dean Leggett, who first appeared on these pages in late 2019, to ask for his memories of that Berlin show.

“We played in London, either the night before or the previous one. There’s bit of a disagreement, but we were at The Underworld in Camden, which received a fairly good review in the NME, and we played the same set in Berlin. I think ‘Nothing for Something’ was about to come out as a single.

“As I recall, we packed up the gear after the gig in Camden but couldn’t leave till late as there was a club at the venue and you had to load out through the back doors. You couldn’t load out while there was dancing. We were really knackered, but still had to load the van, drive to Dover, smoke all the weed we’d got before we got there, then get on the ferry and drive all the next day.

“We got to Berlin in the afternoon. I think we checked into the hotel, had a kip, then pretty much went straight there. That’s my recollection, but Simon thinks we left the following day. Either way, we more or less went straight there.”

The North London based indie outfit’s visit came just four months after the Bundestag switched from Bonn to Berlin, honouring an earlier stipulation of the Unification Treaty to make this born-again city the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Last Time: BOB, 1991. From left – Simon Armstrong, ‘Henry’ Hersom, Richard Blackborow, Dean Leggett

“We’d already played in Berlin, on the East side, a castle on an island, and played a small club on the West side around six months earlier to about 60 people. We went through Checkpoint Charlie, even though the Wall had come down, either 1990 or earlier in 1991. The (previous) gig in East Berlin was absolutely packed, sold out, around 200 in. But this one was more a showcase.”

Dean met Courtney Love, playing with Hole, at an after-show party that night. In fact, he reckons he met Kurt Cobain too, although it seems the Nirvana frontman and bandmates Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl were playing in Austin, Texas that day, on their Nevermind tour.

“Our agent, Rob, came with us. He had loads of bands, including Babes in Toyland, but was trying to get Hole as well. We were staying in the same hotel and had a party with them upstairs in their room, where Courtney was. She was snogging some guy with blond hair. I recall her being quite bossy. There were around 30 or 40 in this smoky room, and she was making him take boxes of beer around to give out. Henry (Hersom), our bass player, was with me. Simon was watching The Monochrome Set and Richard was struggling with a cold and didn’t come out. Me and Henry always said it was Kurt. We didn’t have a camera though.”

While I missed Nirvana, I did see BOB three months earlier at Reading’s After Dark Club – my seventh sighting since April ’88 – but that late night set is a little sketchy in my mind now, and as it turned out, I had to wait 28 years for my next live fix, at Leeds’ Wharf Chambers in late 2019. But this Berlin performance helps fill in a few gaps.

“The reason we did the gig was to try and get a European agent, and we were looking for funding for the next album, which would have been You Can Stop That for a Start. When we came back, we started writing, then went on another tour of Europe, playing nearly all the songs on that record, to learn them. We’ve footage of us playing those songs in Germany, which we hope to put out at some point. When we recorded them, we did it all in five days in Harlow then in Bristol for a few days.”

The story of that and the subsequent 28-year wait for the LP to be released is told in my interview last year with Richard Blackborow. And, as I said to Dean, it seems a trademark BOB move that this live album – also including ‘Round’, which finally appeared on that delayed second long player – features a song called ‘You Can Stop That for a Start’, which – as it turned out – didn’t even make it on to the record of the same name.

“Yeah, exactly! Ha!”

It’s not the only song that missed out, this fan loving ‘Another Crow’ too, originally dubbed ‘Tour Song’, as included on 2014’s deluxe version of Leave the Straight Life Behind in pared-back but spot on demo form. But I certainly can’t argue with the final track listing on You Can Stop That for a Start, and the live record is also a winner.

“We had a very basic soundcheck, about three in the afternoon. There were other things happening around the city, all being recorded for German radio, and we had to be there at half four to go on at five or half five on the dot. We weren’t allowed to drink or swear or take too long talking between songs. Everything was mic’d up, it would go straight to a sound deck, mixed by our engineer, Chris, with a cable going out the back of the building to a van with a huge dish on top, fired to the radio tower on the front of the record sleeve (Berliner Fernsehturm, aka Berlin TV Tower).

“We were all on form, and played really well, so Richard said to Chris, ‘I want you to go out there and get the tape, and I don’t want you to come back until you’ve got it’. Ha! Two hours later, he came back with the reel-to-reel tape. The radio guy said, ‘You can have these, but we want them back’. I don’t know how he persuaded him. Then, 29 years later, Richard gets the tape, bakes it in an oven – as you have to – put it in his computer and up pop the tracks, tweaked a bit where necessary, and when I sent it to Ian (Allcock) at Optic Nerve, who initially wasn’t sure about putting out a live album, he listened and said, ‘Let’s put it out – it’s great!’ The quality’s that good.”

The band come on to Miles Davis’ ‘Milestones’, in a recording mixed from the original ½” digital multitrack tape in 2020. And from incendiary opener ‘Skylark III’ through to fellow Leave the Straight Life Behind prime cut Skylark II, it’s something of a time capsule treat, like the two records that preceded it.

We also get ‘Tired’, apt in the circumstances according to Dean’s back-story, released as a single the previous year, before a return to the prior album for ’95 Tears’, BOB stepping up through the gears again, the set continuing with the first two numbers from early 1990’s Stride Up EP, kicking off our shoes for the splendid ‘Flagpole’ (I’d love to have heard Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood cover this gem, not as bizarre a suggestion as you might think when you know the story behind it) and of its time Madchester/Screamadelic-tinged Bible Belt America mash-up, ‘My Blood is Drink’.

The title track of the LP that didn’t come our way for a near-eternity (the one that didn’t make the final XIII, as it turned out) starts side two in style, before ‘Nothing for Something’, which seemed destined to be BOB’s final single until their welcome return and the release of ‘Queen of Sheba’ last year. And listening back now, this should well have taken the band on again, bringing in the wider audience they deserved, as ‘Convenience’ should have before.

As for ‘Round’, here was a Teenage Fanclub-esque (maybe even Status Quo-like) guitar romp that suggested the power of what was coming our way next. Given a year or so, perhaps it could have been a nailed-on set opener, but on this occasion it instead leads to the big finish, the band back in Leave the Straight Life Behind territory, the Smiths-like collage of ‘Take Take Take’ – and the irony was just how long that stop was before they started again – followed by inevitable show-stopping finale ‘Skylark II’, in typically more live than live form.

Seconds and years, icebergs and tears; this time I’m not on my own.”

And all in all, this Berlin Independence Days set provides a timely reminder – if we should ever need one – of the live might of BOB, showcasing what a great outfit they were on their day, something only now truly realised in some circles. But enough hyperbole. I’m clearly tired and emotional as I write this, so I’ll stop that for a start. As Richard himself put it, ‘I’ve had a lovely evening, please close the door behind you’.

Plastered Cast: BOB in Paris in 1990, on the lead-up to the release of first LP, Leave the Straight Life Behind

For all the latest from BOB, check out the Optic Nerve Recordings website link at https://www.opticnerverecordings.com/collections/bob and keep in touch with the band via social media, following these Facebook and Twitter links, Richard’s BOB account on Instagram, and heading to the BOB/House of Teeth web link.

Posted in Books Films, TV & Radio, Music | Tagged Berlin, BOB, Dean Leggett, Independence Days 1991, Leave the Straight Life Behind, London, Optic Nerve, Queen of Sheba, reading, Richard Blackborow, Simon Armstrong, Wharf Chambers, You Can Stop That For a Start | Leave a comment

The Vapors / Chris Pope & Mic Stoner – Boileroom, Guildford

Posted on October 19, 2021 by writewyattuk

Vapors Trail: From left – Steve Smith, Michael Bowes, Dave and Dan Fenton. Photo: Dan at Redd45Photos

I waited a long time for this. How long? Take your pick – 54 years since my arrival, give or take a fortnight; 41 years since New Clear Days; 39 years since the original split; three years since my last Vapors sighting; 22 months since my last hometown visit; 19 months since the first lockdown, that dreaded virus putting paid to live shows for an eternity. But it was worth it in the end. A homecoming for The Vapors, and me. And, to paraphrase Dave Fenton, this one just had to be the best.

The word intimate does a lot of legwork, but on this occasion it’s about right. The Civic Hall’s long gone and replacement G Live wouldn’t have the same pull, yet as Steve Smith suggested, here’s a venue just a few streets from the launderette above which the band rehearsed and kicked into shape many of the songs on the LP we were celebrating. Yep, it was an emotional night.

The price of its beer aside, I love the Boileroom. But you’ve got to get it right. Head to the bar when it’s packed, and chances are you won’t get that top spot back again. If you do though – even if the closeness of fellow punters after the last two years may give you palpitations – it’s a winner. Even then, there were times I couldn’t see Michael Bowes do his thing. But I bet he was smiling.

First up was Chris Pope and Mic Stoner, representing The Chords UK, 2021’s take on the cult late ‘70s/ early ‘80s outfit of whom Paul Weller’s professed admiration led to a Mod band label. But this was no Who copyist collective, having better tunes than many of the contemporaries lumped into that genre.

Two’s Company: Mic Stoner and Chris Pope of The Chords UK, at the Boileroom. Photo: Dan at Redd45Photos

On this occasion, while just a two-piece they carried the on-stage energy of a far bigger unit, a description also befitting bass player Mic. And I say that respectfully. When he joked at one stage they were going down so well that they might just carry on for a couple more hours, I wasn’t going to argue. There were new-ish songs, including latest single ‘Hey Kids! Come the Revolution’ but also plenty of old school Chords classics, including ‘Maybe Tomorrow’, my highlight ‘Now It’s Gone’, and ‘The British Way of Life’. Probably So Far Away‘s title track and‘Something’s Missing’ too, but I’d played that LP recently, and often struggle to recall what’s in a set if I don’t write notes. Must be my age.

I had hoped to catch original Chords drummer Buddy Ascott and later arrival Kip Herring (I say later, but it was still four decades ago) elsewhere on this tour with The 79’ers, alongside Simon Stebbing (Purple Hearts) and Ian Jones (Long Tall Shorty). Reviews have been great, but it looks like I’ll have to wait until next time, some 42 years after the original band cringed across town at the Civic as soon-to-be ex-manager Jimmy Pursey led an ill-conceived stage invasion after a turned down request to jam with headliners The Undertones alongside fellow ‘Sham Pistols’ Paul Cook and Steve Jones the night both bands came to my hometown. All happens in Guildford, y’know.

Tonight’s headliners were also seen in some quarters as Mod revivalists early on, similar initial interest from The Jam a factor. To me though, both were more on the new wave fringes of punk, if we have to hand out labels. Whatever the tag, on this occasion Chris and Mic (also serving the Hot Rods these days) worked hard to win the assembled over, and succeeded. And there’s certainly no doubting their passion. A real sound from the street.

So it came to pass that The Vapors, 2021 style, wandered down from the dressing room at this Stoke Fields venue – The Elm Tree in my Guildford days – and on to the cramped stage (I’ve got tickets for Stone Foundation there next month, and I’m struggling to see how that octet will fit on there without a shoehorn and axle grease), warming up with debut 45 ‘Prisoners’ and Together’s title track then ‘King L’ before launching into side one of their wondrous first LP in this belated 40^th anniversary tour show. And while I’d already caught the band a couple of times since their re-emergence, this was the best yet. Partly because it was a hometown gig and because of all we’ve been through (it fell 23 months after my last Guildford live shows, seeing The Selecter at G Live and The Wedding Present at the Boileroom in one brief return), and partly as it brought a rare chance to catch up with family and friends – my sister Jackie seeing them, while stalwart Al had his first sighting in 40 years – including members of an online faithful I’d not previously met. But also it was because of the way the band gelled on the night.

Drum Major: Michael Bowes in action for The Vapors at Boileroom, Guildford. Photo: Dan at Redd45Photos

As mentioned here before, I was too young (sort of) to see the band first time, but loved the records, so 2016 at Liverpool Arts Club was something I never dared to dream happening. Then came Manchester’s Ruby Lounge in July 2018, both featuring the classic line-up’s Dave, Steve and Ed Bazalgette, plus ever-entertaining Michael on drums. But this topped those. I never got to see Howard Smith play, but it was great seeing Ed a couple of times back in situ. Yet this time, a four-piece involving Dave’s son Dan Fenton deputising on lead guitar pulled out all the stops. And while it never pays to over-analyse, evergreen Michael and Dan totally bring out the irrepressible youth in Steve and Dave.

From the moment they launched into ‘Spring Collection’ then ‘Turning Japanese’, I was sold, the latter inspiring a mad post-song verdict from an over-emotional fan down the front. He’s probably still telling people how ‘fucking brilliant’ it was a few days on. ‘Cold War’ and ‘America’ trod a similar path before the first of my major highlights, another Guildford-inspired song, ‘Trains’, as fresh today as ever, and ‘Bunkers’, as covered live by His Wooden Fish, the band I laughingly managed, their lead singer among the returning faithful tonight, up from the New Forest.

Before they metaphorically turned the vinyl over, we got soon-to-be released single, ‘One of My Dreams’, charged with emotion given that it was five years to the day of the official return at Dingwalls, Camden, a song held back from Together suggesting there’s still plenty in the tank all these years on. Again, I’ve said it before, this is no band content with past or near glory, but all about creating great music and re-interpreting what came before without losing the original spirit. And as Dave puts it on ‘Somehow’, I’d be obliged if they ‘don’t leave me now’.

Two tracks followed from 1981’s Magnets, another LP surely set for full play treatment soon – again a delayed 41 years on – ‘Jimmie Jones’ never sounding better to these ears and ‘Daylight Titans’ also delivered with plenty of verve. And then we got side two, Dan pointing at his old man during the timeless ‘News at Ten’, before further high-points (they all were) ‘Somehow’ (with plenty of audience participation), ‘Sixty Second Interval’, ‘Waiting for the Weekend’ (which never got the chart run it deserved, even if the album version was better), and always poignant LP finale ‘Letter from Hiro’.

Talk Talk: Steve Smith and Dave Fenton didn’t need words at the Boileroom. Photo: Dan at Redd45Photos

There were times when the guitar got a bit lost, but there’s no doubting Dan’s abilities in Ed’s absence and I know every note anyway, so kind of heard what I missed in my head. What’s more, he does less heavy metal posturing these days, maturing into his role, and looked every bit an integral part of the band, at times seeming to be what Dave needed to get through, thus allowing Steve to do his own thing, in a left-handed legendary style.

The spot-on three-part harmonies also deserve a mention, and of course ‘Microwave’ Michael’s input, our sticksman spending a good part of the proceedings on his feet. I guess his view was obscured too. And that grin and the ability of his playing never fails to cheer even the miserable punters. Long may that continue.

There was still time for Together’s ‘In Babylon’, again proving the strength in depth and future promise, before curtain-closer ‘Here Comes the Judge’. On my last sighting in Manchester, travelling mate Steve C warned that we had to leg it somewhat to catch the last train from Piccadilly. It’s alright, this is definitely the last song, I assured him. But anyone who’s ever turned over ‘Turning Japanese’ or seen the band live knows I was tempting fate, the traditional finale never over-long yet certainly stretching the limits of endurance for those keen to avoid missing public transport down the years. But tonight, I was driving and in control of the situation, savouring every moment.

The next day it took six and a half hours to get home from Surrey, crawling through the West Midlands and Cheshire to Lancashire, but it was all worth it. Because I was there. And this one was different from the rest.

Family Way: Dave and Dan Fenton during The Vapors’ Guildford return visit. Photo: Dan at Redd45Photos

With thanks to Dan at Redd45Photos for use of the photographs copied here. For more of his splendid photographic images, head here.

The Chords play a full band set at the 100 Club in Oxford Street, London, on Saturday 19th February 2022, a launch for their album, Big City Dreams. To find out more, check out this website link.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Boileroom, Chris pope, Dan Fenton, Dave Fenton, guildford, Magnets, Mic Stoner, Michael Bowes, New Clear Days, One of my Dreams, Steve Smith, The 79'ers, The Chords, The Vapors, Together | 1 Comment

Liam Ó Maonlaí, Jacquelyn Hynes and Clive Mellor / Hungry Bentley – Penwortham, The Venue

Posted on October 16, 2021 by writewyattuk

Spiritual Feeling: Liam Ó Maonlaí’s memorable tour finale, at Penwortham’s The Venue. Photo: Michael Porter

A night out with Liam Ó Maonlaí is a spiritual affair, and the intimate surroundings of this Lancashire arts centre proved perfect for our Dublin visitor, a sell-out crowd clearly there for a full-on music experience rather than casual chats with friends at the bar during the sets.

It’s not always the case that a performer, no matter how beguiling – and Liam certainly fits that description – can bring it right down at times and hear himself breathe and his keyboard hum, but this appreciative audience was happy to keep it buttoned until invited to join in, as befitting a live show in a former library.

An uplifting evening got off to a mellow start as local lad John Clayton, aka Hungry Bentley, shared all but one song from new platter, Exposition, his Nigel Stonier-produced long player reduced to sole voice and guitar, and going down a treat.

Openers ‘Don’t Frighten the Horses’ and ‘Loose Arrangement’ carried shades of Damon Gough, yet John’s not badly drawn on this evidence, and if next choice ‘Elodie’ was an exercise in writing a song about a girl and finding The Beautiful South have stolen many available names, he somehow got by, with hints of Lightning Seeds in places.

‘Alabama Chrome’ was a pared-back highlight, a pleasing chord sequence afforded Robert Forster-like quirk, and ‘Play Them as They Lay’ also impressed, John in namesake Lennon territory with a splash of Dylan thrown in.

While ‘Time is a Number’ also echoed Ian Broudie-esque melodic flair, closing number ‘Car in the Rain’ was more a pensive, precipitous nod to Justin Currie’s town where nothing ever happens, in what proved an apt precursor to the main guest’s opener.

It was the wet ride from Manchester that inspired Liam to treat us to ‘An Emotional Time’ on arrival, a brave decision given that the Songs from the Rain title track of sorts includes some taxing notes for a tonsil-warmer, the red wine yet to work its magic.

Soon the voice was soothed though, and so were we, next number ‘Sweet Marie’ transporting us to Home, Hothouse Flowers’ 1990 style, before the first of two borrowed love songs, Liam breezing from ’68 to ’78 through Bacharach and David’s ‘This Guy’s In Love with You’ (‘Probably gonna kill it,’ he warned, but it was never in doubt he’d deliver) to ‘a bit more vulnerable’ fellow classic, Dylan’s ‘Is Your Love in Vain?’ never more gorgeous, perfect for those wondrous vocals.

More Vulnerable: Hothouse Flowers’ Liam Ó Maonlaí at Penwortham’s The Venue. Photo: Michael Porter

The day after Paddy Moloney’s passing, Liam talked of collective mourning at his loss, paying tribute to The Chieftains’ co-founder and ever-present as he was joined by special guest Jacquelyn Hynes for a fitting penny whistle (Liam) and flute (Jacquelyn) tribute, ‘Limerick’s Lamentation’.

From there we were back to 1993 and the Flowers’ third LP, the subtle power of ‘Your Nature’ providing an opening set finale that left hairs up on the back of necks before a call to replenish our glasses ahead of part two.

(As it turns out, 1993 was also the year – Jacquelyn later told me – ‘Limerick’s Lamentation’ featured on The Celtic Harp – A Tribute to Edward Bunting, The Chieftains (who previously featured the number on their 1977 Live! Album, although the first sound recording was by Sean O’Riada and Ceoltoiri Cualainn in the early ‘60s, including many Chieftains’ founding members, Paddy Moloney among them) joined by the Belfast Harp Orchestra (‘led by Janet Harbison, a great harpist’). But she added, “I learned it from Martin Hayes and Denis Cahill’s 1997 album, The Lonesome Touch”.)

Flute Fox: Jacquelyn Hynes was on form with Liam Ó Maonlaí at Penwortham. Photo: Michael Porter

If ever there was confirmation that neither the Flowers nor their frontman believe in the constraint of set-lists, here it was, a woman in the front row asking on Liam’s return the tale behind 2016 LP Let’s Do This Thing’s opener, ‘Three Sisters’, the main man happy to oblige, filling us in on a family story or two before playing the song, following that with another anecdote about one of those sisters and Liam and a brother, before taking us into – not related, I might add – a traditional number about ‘two brothers, and one of ‘em’s been poisoned’, ‘Amhrán na hEascainne’, or ‘The Song of the Eel’.

(Again, Jacquelyn filled me in later, telling me it was ‘recorded by Joe Heaney, a famous Sean nos singer from Connemara who recorded it in 1964 for On the Road to Connemara. The English version is ‘Lord Randall’, and there’s a version on Martin Carthy’s Anthems in Eden”.)

Liam described ‘Amhrán na hEascainne’ as a song of ‘collective pain’ and the blues in different form, and on this occasion it gave rise to a mighty bluesy romp, the Allman Brothers’ ‘Stormy Monday’ seeing a scene-stealing appearance from harmonica artisan Clive Mellor, miraculously appearing from the bar in another evening high, two years and four days after I last saw him work his magic on stage with Richard Hawley at Liverpool’s Mountford Hall. What that man can wring out of the humble mouth organ defies belief. He has true soul, and as he retreated back to his drink, a fella in front of me speculated out loud the chances of that unfolding in Penwortham on a Tuesday night. He had a point, but as Liam put it, there’s always that chance, underlining that by heading into ‘The Song of Possibilities’. At least I think so. I can’t seem to find mention of that out there. Someone’ll put me right, I’m sure.

Blues Maestros: Liam Ó Maonlaí with Clive Mellor at Penwortham’s The Venue. Photo: Michael Porter

I kind of lost my thread, notebook-wise, as we headed towards the finishing line, but Jacquelyn led the pair of them far away on her own composition, ‘Lost in Marrakesh’, on a night when we also got a snatch of Ian Dury’s ‘Clevor Trever’ from Liam, joking about his jealousy at actor brother Colm getting to meet the chief Blockhead on a film set back in the day.

And all along the way there was that amazing stage presence from the man at the electric piano, the slightest of facial expressions from our distinguished, hirsute visitor enough to raise a smile or garner attention, a cocked head to the cameraman and mere swish of that mane ensuring we ate from his hand. But time was soon against us, the volunteer staff looking anxiously at watches, a curfew almost upon us. Liam saw that and acknowledged he may need to finish on a hit, offering a sublime choice of ‘Don’t Go’, ‘Hallelujah Jordan’ or ‘This Is It’. A three-way split on that became four as a fella at the back with a Northern Irish accent chose ‘I Can See Clearly Now’. And so it came to pass that our visitor gave us something of a medley, a fresh take on the first Flowers’ hit including occasional tilts into Johnny Nash territory before ‘Hallelujah Jordan’ and a further visit to Nash-ville.

We sang along, then there were calls for more, but Liam drained his glass and pointed out the ‘anxious beautiful women behind the bar’ waiting to lock up. I was soon away, but not before a handshake with our esteemed visitor, 30 years after my last sighting in Sydney with the band who made his name. And how had I not realised he was barefoot before? To be fair, I’m not even sure he was touching the ground earlier. In fact, we were all floating at times on the power of song. Come again soon, Liam. And bring your friends back too.

Thirsty Work: Liam Ó Maonlai has his glass filled at Penwortham’s The Venue. Photo: Michael Porter

For the recent WriteWyattUK feature/interview with Liam Ó Maonlaí and further links, head here. With thanks to Michael Porter for the photographs. You’ll find more examples of his work here. Thanks also to Jacquelyn Hynes for the extra information. Jacquelyn’s website is here. The same goes to John Clayton, aka Hungry Bentley, for his labours on the night. For more about Hungry Bentley and new LP, Exposition, head here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged alman Brothers, Bacharach and David, Badly Drawn Boy, Bob Dylan, Clive Mellor, Don't Go, Dublin, Hothouse Flowers, Hungry Bentley, I Can See Clearly Now, Ian Broudie, Ian Dury, Jacquelyn Hynes, Liam O'Maonlai, Paddy Maloney, Penwortham, Songs from the Rain, The Chieftains, The Venue | Leave a comment

Beyond the lockdowns, Normal service resumes – in conversation with Henry Normal

Posted on October 7, 2021 by writewyattuk

Heading Out: Henry Normal, out and about right now with The Escape Plan tour, coming to a town near you

It’s fair to say Henry Normal kept himself busy over the 18 months when the world seemed to stand still, a spell that for this Nottingham-born BAFTA award-winner included publication of two new poetry collections.

After more than 30 years making acclaimed TV and film, writer and producer Henry – real name Peter Carroll – has returned to his love of poetry, new live tour The Escape Plan currently doing the rounds.

Recently turned 65, Henry draws on more than 40 years of work in his live show, sharing tales, jokes and poems from his Audio and Radio Industry Awards (ARIA) nominated BBC Radio 4 series, each episode exploring a different theme, the next – A Normal Ageing – airing in early November. And then there are those 10 poetry books, the latest of which, The Beauty Within Shadow and Distance Between Clouds, were written during the COVID-19 pandemic, covering many aspects of lockdown, life and love, with plenty of that distinctive humour.

Henry’s poetry renaissance was inspired by his experiences bringing up his autistic son Johnny, something central to the live show and his latest books, the result a funny and moving collection of work on the page and the stage, about life and family.

There have also been weekly online poetry sessions via his New Poetry Society, Henry joined each week by guest poets for conversation and verse. Two poets, one hour, every week, live via Zoom, hosted by the Inspire library programme and a poetry festival he founded in his native Nottingham.

You’ll probably know most of this, but Henry received his special BAFTA for services to television in June 2017, his output including some of the nation’s best-loved programmes, co-writing and script-editing credits including, with Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash, The Royle Family, The Mrs Merton Show and spin-off Mrs Merton and Malcolm, and with Steve Coogan, Paul and Pauline Calf Video Diaries, Coogan’s Run, Tony Ferrino, Doctor Terrible, all three of Steve’s live tours and the film The Parole Officer.

And as co-founder/MD of Baby Cow Productions, set up with Steve in 1999, he produced and script-edited among others Gavin and Stacey, Alan Partridge, Moone Boy, Uncle, The Mighty Boosh, Nighty Night, I Believe in Miracles, Marion and Geoff, Red Dwarf, Hunderby, Camping,and Oscar-nominated film Philomena, before stepping down in 2016.

Prior to all that though, there was his performance poetry, touring with the likes of pre-fame Pulp, stand-up stars such as Linda Smith, and literary giants, including Seamus Heaney, travelling from Helsinki to New York via factories, schools, pop concerts, jazz clubs, folk clubs and festivals. And now it seems he’s returned to that world.

Is that some masochistic tendency in him, I asked, for all his success in writing, to all intents and purposes staying out of the limelight while close friends and colleagues down the years like Steve Coogan and Caroline Aherne courted it, returning to the loneliness of the stage, cruising the UK in a new 90-minute live show?

“Ah, well, I like a challenge! There’s no point in just doing the easy thing all your life. I started off as a poet. You can’t make a lot of money as a poet. You can just about scrape a living, but I got bamboozled by the bright lights of comedy and television. It’s akin to my 40 years in the desert.”

You’re not just happy dusting down your BAFTA behind closed doors?

“D’you know, that wanes after a couple of days. I’ve always been in the communication business, one way and another, and the great thing about poetry is that it’s a communication of perception, and the way I view the world gets communicated to another person. The great things is, with a film you may have 200 to 300 people working on it, so it gets pulled this way and that. But with a poem, it’s essentially just me and you, it’s the purest form of communication in a rhythm sense.”

And not just one, but two new poetry collections out there. The Beauty Within Shadow (written between August 2019 and June 2020, its poetry concerned with ‘the balancing of darkness and light in our everyday lives, the search for an understanding of pain and sorrow, and the processing of other thoughts we’d usually avoid by filling our days with mindless distractions’) and follow-up The Distance Between Clouds (written between June 2020 and March 2021, ‘a collection of poetry about joy, positivity and optimism, before I die unloved and forgotten’) making it 10 poetry books in total.

“I think so, yeah. I wrote one going into the lockdown because it was a strange, new adventure. We’d done so much running around that the idea of standing still and exploring your family, ourselves, your home and your space, well, what’s happened over the last year and a half is that we’ve explored that space deeper than before, and the first book I wrote was called The Beauty Within Shadow. Because we are within the shadow of this awful pandemic, but there’s still beauty to be found.”

The first year or so of my features in that period often touched on interviewees asking, ‘what happens next?’, but now it seems to be more about reflecting back on that period. For a while we saw a collective responsibility, Spirit of the Blitz positivity, and acknowledgement of those who were truly important, from community and family to health and care workers. But then there was the ‘let the bodies pile high’ mentality, Dominic Cummings test-driving his eyesight, and so on, that belief seemingly compromised.

“I think the trouble is we don’t know what the future is. We never know, but it seems our muscle memory has had a bit of a jolt, so even something like going to the post office, you’ve got to remember what the social norms are for that. All those little things you take for granted.

“I always say to people who come to be me about writing, write what you know, and a good illustration of that is if you think of your local café. If you’re writing about my local café, you don’t know the details, but if you write about your own, you know if it’s waitress service, if you go to the counter, whether you tip, if you order your food and pay straight away or at the end. All those sorts of things. And in a way, we’re re-learning those things.

“And the second book, Distance Between Clouds, if you think about clouds and rainfall, you can look at the negatives, such as, ‘Oh, it’s going to rain,’ but if you look at the distance between them, you’ll think, ‘Well, I’ve got that much sunshine’. So, again, what I’m trying to do is look for the optimism, and this new world we’re building and examining, we can see whether we like the old way of doing it or whether there’s a new way.”

I guess that fits in with your weekly Zoom poetry sessions, The New Poetry Society. Is that your way of spreading the word and inspiring?

“Well, yes, it helps me keep in touch. When Zoom first became a thing, I did a few meetings, then thought, it’s alright performing like you’re on stage, but really it’s a more intimate thing. You’re in your home, everyone’s n their home. What you really need is conversation. What we’re missing is sitting down with each other, having a conversation.

“I started off getting Lemn Sissay, an old mate of mine, and he was great, and the thing is, when you start talking, I learn things about them that I didn’t know, and I’ve done 21 now, the last eight for the Manchester Libraries, and that was great. I’m a big fan of the libraries, and I’ll be coming to Darwen Library on this tour.”

Ah, Darwen Library Theatre. A great venue. I’ve seen Blancmange there a couple of times, Neil Arthur having gone to school next door, sharing some stories about his youth each night.

“I always thought Blancmange was the best name for a pop band. There’s no way you can become the big ‘I am’ with a name like Blancmange!”.

True, although Neil Arthur’s local sensibilities were already kept in check on that front. He tells a lovely tale about a woman across the road from where he grew up calling him over while he was back home, probably gloating about his new success in that there London, her deriding him in true down-to-earth Lancastrian style for his performance on Top of the Pops, picking up on that line from ‘Living on the Ceiling’, taking exception to him being ‘Up the wall, I’m up the bloody tree’, as if to say, ‘Y’daft bugger, what’re you on about?’.

“Ha! Yeah, ‘Have a word wi’ y’self!’”

Head on the block here, but poetry was something I didn’t realise I liked until a realisation that Ray Davies, Chris Difford, Pete Shelley, John O’Neill, Paul Weller, and so on wrote poetry. They just happened to call it lyrics. Then there was John Cooper Clarke, in the scheme of things not far off from fellow Salfordian Mark E. Smith.

“Exactly, and the thing is, there’s a million different flavours of poetry. No one would ever say, ‘Do you know, I don’t like music,’ and you’d never say, ‘I don’t like paintings, they’re not for me’. Yet with poetry, people will, as though they’ve seen every poet and read every poem and decided that’s not for them.

“If you think about music, the difference between classical and jazz and blues, there’s all those variations in poetry, even to the extent that … I’m a big Nick Cave fan, so within the genre of rock or pop or whatever, I could say I like that and say I like a particular artist. There are artists I don’t like in rock and pop – being from Nottingham, I was never a big fan of Paper Lace. And talking about Nick Cave, there are certain albums I like and certain albums I don’t, like Nocturne or something like that, and then of those albums, there will be certain tracks I’ll play more than others.

“But you don’t think of that in terms of poetry, saying, ‘I like some of his books, and some of his poems’. It’s always a sort of carte blanche ‘you do like poetry, or you don’t’.”

In my case, I became aware of certain First World war poets, then maybe Dylan Thomas, then there was begrudging acceptance that despite my teenage self’s Dad loving him, I had to admit I enjoyed John Betjeman’s verse, and in more recent years the likes of Luke Wright, Mike Garry, and so on. It gradually gets you.

“It does, and very often we don’t really know that much of it. Were taught a little at school, but that’s not necessarily the flavours we’re going to like throughout life. I remember when I started, thinking, ‘This poetry lark is not passionate enough’. I’m talking the early ‘70s. The First World War poets, some of them, but I hadn’t read them. I think a lot of people’s misgivings about poetry is borne out of ignorance, for want of a better word … in the same way you might say, ‘I don’t like jazz’. But there’s a million flavours of jazz.”

I gather your journey into performance poetry started alongside the likes of Pulp and emerging new wave bands.

“When I started, there were really no poetry events to go to, certainly not for the sort of poetry I was doing. Only what I’d call dry poetry events. I did some of those, but in order to reach an audience, I had to do things like prisons – a very captive audience there! – and hospitals, schools and pop concerts. I lived in Chesterfield for a while, so I’d tour with some of the Sheffield bands, as they seemed to be doing well. Pulp had released a few albums but still hadn’t made it, and we’d turn up at some gigs there’d very often be no one there, or just an ‘andful.

“There were no Nottingham bands at that time, and a lot of the Sheffield bands you won’t have heard of, because they never made it. Dig Vis Drill was one of my favourites, a sort of electronic and guitar band. I loved them to bits. There was Mr Morality, Screaming Trees, a goth band, and some Chesterfield bands like Le Bland and Criminal Sex, a punk band. I drove their van a couple of times – they were too young to hire a van …”

Perhaps too young to be in a band of that name too.

“Yes, I was never involved, apart from driving the van – I was just the getaway driver! Then there was Body Factory, a few who never quite made it. Then I came to Manchester, where there were a lot of singer-songwriters, Martin Coogan I met early on, and went on to some success with The Mock Turtles. And of course, I met his brother. But probably my favourite of the Manchester lot was someone who used to be called Johnny Dangerously, now better known as John Bramwell, or I Am Kloot. Lemn Sissay and I toured with him, must have done around 30 gigs, and those are probably my favourite gigs of all time, touring with Lemn and John.”

John was the second last live act I saw before the shutters came down with the virus, playing in the intimate surroundings of The Venue, Penwortham. A great night it was too.

“D’you know, for me he’s always got the heart of a poet, so he got on very well with us. We toured together in a little car, and he has a great sense of humour.”

In Penwortham he was giggling much of the night.

“Yes … he’s probably better as he drinks! I’ve seen him drunk on stage a few times, and he actually gets funnier the more he’s pissed off! We’d do a gig, then play pitch and putt, go-kart riding, on a beach, or something. They were more than just gigs. They were days out, really.”

Great Memories: The Royle Family, its early scripts by Henry, Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash (Photo: BBC)

We talked about your latest books trying to make sense and cope with all the strangeness and sadness around us, with the pandemic. How do you reckon you coped? Was it just you, Angela (Pell, a screenwriter, the pair publishing best-seller A Normal Family in 2018, drawing on their family experience), and your son?

“Yes, and with Johnny being autistic, to be honest I think he prefers the lockdown. It’s quieter, the sequences of our life are quite rigid, and he likes that routine. For him, less planes in the sky and less cars on the road means less noise, and there’s less people coming round, so he’s very happy.”

I see he’s an artist ‘in his own write’, as John Lennon would put it, responsible for the cover art of the latest two poetry books (and given his own month-long art exhibition in April 2018 at Phoenix Arts Centre, Brighton, Art By Johnny proving an acclaimed success and breaking attendance records).

“Very much so. He paints every day and he’s been doing Zoom classes, exploring different types of painting and forms of creativity, and he’s enjoyed those. They’ve been brilliant. We’ve coped very well, and I’m looking forward now to going out, being a social animal, meeting crowds, having a laugh. To have a laugh with a couple of hundred in a room, you can’t beat it. I don’t do drugs, I don’t drink to excess, anything like that, but the adrenaline and the way your blood surges when you’re having a laugh with a crowd is a big draw, a big high.”

Of course, I never really believed that you’d retired.

“Ha! Well, I’ve retired from television and film, but I had to put that because people kept sending me scripts and saying, ‘Can you get this on the telly?’. I made more than 450 television programmes, so to a lot of people it’s what I’m known as. But if I made 451 programmes, nobody would know the difference. And once we’d made Philomena, a massive hit all over the world, I’d probably peaked in terms of film and TV production. I think it’s worth recognising that was quite a huge event.

“Doing Gavin and Stacey was great, but you don’t want to compete with yourself all the time, trying to top that. To actually top The Royle Family was quite a hard thing, and in a way I don’t think I ever could, so rather than carry on writing I moved into production, getting things like The Mighty Boosh off and Julia Davis’ work off was sort of investing in the next generation. And I loved helping their careers and dreams.

“But now, as I reach pensionable age … well, I say that, but they keep moving it back, don’t they … as I keep chasing the pension, I’m thinking there are things I’d like to say, and fun to be had in doing what I’m very passionate about, and I hope what I do best. I don’t know if you’ve heard any of the Radio 4 shows …”

I was going to ask more about A Normal Ageing and The Escape Plan.

“A Normal Ageing is the one I’m researching at the moment. I think it’s my 10^th show. What I do is pick a subject, go on to Wikipedia, put the word ‘ageing’ or whatever it is in, read the definition and what it’s about, so I know what I’m talking about, then just read as much as I can. With ageing, there are creatures that don’t age, like jellyfish and various worms. And do you know lobsters don’t really age? But they do pee through their faces, so it’s not an ideal existence.

Massive Hit: another triumph for Baby Cow Productions, the company formed by Henry and Steve Coogan

“Finding facts like that is very interesting, and then I talk to lots of people, get their views on the subject. It’s only a half-hour show but I try to do an hour’s worth of material then reach some sort of conclusion. And it’s worked well on all the others. And the shows I do live are very similar to the radio shows – you’ve got stories, jokes and poems as I explore these subjects. And with The Escape Plan, it’s escape through creativity. Richard Lovelace said, ‘Stone walls do not a prison make,’ and we’ve all been in lockdown but we’re all in us ‘eads, so we can escape any time we want.”

I thought there might also be a nod to your Brighton surroundings, and The Escape Club.

“Well, I do live in Brighton, although I’ve got to say my heart’s still in the north. It’s quite funny, I’m bringing up a southerner, but strangely enough, because he only speaks to me and his mum, he’s got a northern accent.”

It’s the other way with me, trying to give my girls a southern identity, having moved to Lancashire from Guildford in late ‘93.

“Oh, I see. You’re part of that movement! But I think you can safely say you’re a northerner now.”

I’m not quite sure what to make of that, but maybe that’s acceptance from Henry, so I’ll take it on that level. With such an amazing CV as a writer and producer, and all those shows we mentioned and many more, I wondered what you loved watching, growing up.

“Well … (Sgt.) Bilko. I loved Bilko. The weird thing is, when BBC Three started, they said, ‘We need more teenagers on, as teenagers will watch teenagers,’ but I watched Bilko, and it never occurred to me he was a 50-year-old American bloke. He was just a great character.”

Do you remember early ‘80s post-punk outfit Serious Drinking? They had a great song, Countdown to Bilko, about how dull Sunday television was in those days … until The Phil Silvers Show came on later that evening.

“That’s brilliant! Yes, Bilko was my favourite television programme, and my favourite comedian, one that really inspired me, was Jack Benny. There was something beautiful about him, he was such a lovely man and always able to take the mick out of himself. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the original To Be or Not to Be, he did a great version during the war, and it’s his stillness that’s brilliant. He’s got this lovely way of milking the scene for more than it’s there for.

“And the moment I realised I wanted to be either a writer or a performer was when Jack Benny was on the Dean Martin Show. Dean Martin would pretend to be at home, and was on the phone when Jack Benny walked in, and they’re both in tuxedos.

“Now, I’m a raggedy-arse kid in Bilborough, Nottingham, about 12 years old, my Mum’s died, there’s five kids and a Dad who works at Raleigh, we’ve no money, and I’m watching these two blokes in tuxedos. But they nod at each other while he’s on the phone, Jack walks around the settee but doesn’t sit on it, he gets on the floor, starts throwing dice. This is a grown-up man. I’d never seen a grown-up having fun like this. I looked at that, and thought, ‘That’s the world I want to be in!’.”

Boxroom 101: Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash in Mrs. Merton and Malcom (Photo: BBC / Tony Russell)

We all had our ways of getting through the lockdowns, and for many of us part of that involved binge-watching TV shows we’d missed for some reason or other. In my case that included a late conversion to the wonders of Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing, The Detectorists, and The A-Word, and returning to old favourites on the BBC iPlayer, including – for the first time since they first went out – The Royle Family. And that’s certainly stood the test of time, not least the early series. Does catching those clips take Henry back to working with Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash?

“Oh, yeah. The lovely thing is I was paid to sit in a room with funny people. Caroline beyond the television was a funny person anyway. When the bosses used to come up from London, we worked on the sixth floor at Granada, they’d have a chat with us, then when they left, Caroline would open the window and shout down to them, these big top brass, ‘Do a funny walk!’. And because she was so cheeky and charming, they would do a funny walk across the road.

“I love that she wasn’t over-awed by authority. She had that little devilment. If she didn’t feel like writing, we’d go on a Granada tour, go shopping, or go for a bite to eat. Most days we’d probably only write for a couple of hours.”

Were you the one saying, ‘Come on, we best get back’?

“Oh, I was definitely the responsible one. I’d write it all down then type it all up. Even when we were doing Mrs Merton, when we had Dave Gorman writing with us. There’d be four of us, but I’d be the one writing it down. I got paid as a script editor as well as a writer, which was quite nice. I was the only one with a computer. But it was such good fun, and nobody ever worried if you told a bad joke. You’ve got to be able to fail in creativity as well and push the boundaries. And you don’t know where the boundaries are, until you’ve crossed them.”

There are some impressive stop-offs on this forthcoming tour, not least Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, where I last saw John Cooper Clarke, supporting Squeeze.

“And of course, Ricky Tomlinson and Sue Johnston are from Liverpool. People often forget the mum and dad in The Royle Family are from Liverpool. And they were always in the frame for that, from day one.

“And the Liverpool poets were a big influence on my career. I’ve worked with Roger McGough {in 2018 Henry recorded an episode of Poetry Please which he curated and co-presented with Roger} and Brian Patten, and when I started Manchester Poetry Festival {now Manchester Literature Festival}, I put him on there, and when I started Nottingham Poetry Festival, I put him on there. I’m a big fan. In a way, I like to think I’m a composite of all three {I’m guessing the third referred to is Adrian Henri}. They had three distinct areas in poetry, and I like to dabble in all three. And of course, Spike Milligan was the other big influence.”

That’s someone I meant to mention, having known him from radio and telly but also from a young age for Puckoon and his war memoirs before that great body of poetry.

Poetic Justice: Henry at the BBC to record Radio 4’s Poetry Please with Liverpool legend Roger McGough

“Well, I read all his comedy books, then bought Small Dreams of a Scorpion, and it made me cry. He’s so funny, and yet … Back to the tour though, there’s the Sale gig, right near Wythenshawe, where The Royle Family was based, and Wigan, where Lemn’s from. In fact, he sent me a text and it just said, ‘I’ve made it, Henry – a full house at Wigan!’”

You’ve reminded me of a conversation with John Bramwell, talking about the Liverpool and Manchester scenes in music and how he didn’t really fit in either. There’s something of that with you, and The Royle Family had feet in both camps.

“Well, I’m from Nottingham originally, lived in Hull for a while, lived in Chesterfield, lived in Manchester for about 15 years. I think I’ve general northern. I’m probably Doncaster station. Somebody once billed me as ‘local boy everywhere north of Derby’.”

With not only an honorary doctorate of letters from Nottingham Trent University and another by Nottingham University, but also a beer and a bus named after you in your home city.

“Yes, that’s very nice. That bus has been touring more than I have, of course. But I’m really looking forward to going to the north west. I’ve got such fond memories, and there have been many great poets. Going over to Preston I’m going to be thinking about Hovis Presley. Every corner, as it were, brings back good memories.”

I could have sworn you said Elvis Presley for a moment.

“Hovis Presley! He had a show called Poetic Off Licence. Unfortunately, he died too young. I did manage to film him for television. I got around 60 poets for a programme, Whine Gums, including some who’d never been filmed before, which I’m quite proud of.”

In fact, Hovis was from Bolton, but that’s not far off. As for Henry, how about that tag, ‘the Alan Bennett of poetry’, as The Scotsman put it?

“Well, I love Alan Bennett. I always remember that documentary he did, in a Harrogate hotel {Dinner at Noon, 1988}. He’s on camera talking about the hotel, goes into the bathroom, and he’s shouting at the cameraman, ‘There’s oodles of towels in here!’. He’s got such a lovely way with everyday language.”

“Anyway, I realise you’re going to have to condense this all down to 100 words. Did you know, when we started The Mrs Merton Show, we used to have about five guests? Then it went down to four, then three, then two, because we always complained you never really get a proper conversation going otherwise.”

Well, the word-count stretched to considerably more than 100 words, and I should acknowledge here my thanks to Henry, not least for not mentioning my namesake, Mrs Merton’s lad Malcolm during our conversation (particularly after suffering at school for all those ‘Course you can, Malcolm’ comments for Vicks Sinex adverts from 1972 onwards … not to be confused with a later Tunes advert where the fella asks for a ‘second class return to Dottingham, please’), having half-expected a prompt to get back to my boxroom at some stage.

The Escape Plan tour opened on Dylan Thomas’ old patch in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, on October 1^st, moving on this weekend to Sale Waterside – 8th October, a Morecambe Playhouse sell-out on October 9th and The Library Theatre, Darwen – 10th October, then King’s Place, London – 27th October. Then there’s Square Chapel, Halifax – 3rd November, Barnsley Old School House – 4^th November, Retford St Saviours – 13^th November, plus a Collingham sell-out – 15th November, a hometown date at Metronome, Nottingham – 16th November, The Met, Bury – 17th November,, Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool – 19th November, Garret Theatre, Chester (part of the Chester Literature Festival) – 20th November, The Ferret, Preston – 21st November, King’s Hall, Ilkley – 23rd November, and a sell-out at Brighton Komedia – 1st December. Henry’s live outings then resume next year at The Quay Theatre, Sudbury – 10th February, Bristol Folk House, Bristol – 12th February, The Old Courts, Wigan – 13th February, Knutsford Little Theatre – 14^th February, Wylam Brewery, Newcastle – 15th February, The Leadmill, Sheffield – 16th February, Stamford Corn Exchange – 17th February, The Pound Arts, Corsham – 24th February, Plough Arts Centre, Great Torrington – 25th February, before a finale at The Acorn, Penzance – 26^th February.

And for all the latest from Henry Normal, head here. You can also keep tabs via Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Alan Bennett, Angela Pell, Baby Cow Productions, BBC Radio 4, Bilko, Blancmange, Brian Patten, Caroline aherne, Chesterfield, Craig Cash, Dig Vis Drill, Gavin and Stacey, Henry Normal, Hovis Presley, Jack Benny, John Bramwell, Julia Davis, Lemn Sissay, Mrs Merton, Nick Cave, Nottingham, Phil Silvers, Philomena, poetry, Pulp, Roger McGough, Serious Drinking, Sheffield, Spike Milligan, Steve Coogan, The Escape Plan, the Mighty Boosh, The Royle Family | Leave a comment

Coming to an understanding of myself – the Liam Ó Maonlaí interview

Posted on October 5, 2021 by writewyattuk

Bodhrán Basics: Liam Ó Maonlaí in action, and he’s returned to the UK this month (Photo: Gee Martin)

It’s not often that world-renowned singer-songwriters – not least those from Dublin – end solo tours on the outskirts of Preston, Lancashire. But Liam Ó Maonlaí’s rarely one to take a conventional route.
Hothouse Flowers frontman Liam’s Routes Music-promoted 11-date tour opened at the Tyneside Irish Festival, and has since involved dates in Bradford and Birmingham, with Sheffield and Penistone in South Yorkshire next, then briefly across into East Lancashire for a show in Barnoldswick before darting back over the Pennines and beyond to Louth in Lincolnshire then up to Hull and York, finishing at The Carlton Club, Manchester, and The Venue, Penwortham early next week, a musical journey in an intimate setting promised at every step.
One of the more talented, charismatic, soulful performers, musician’s musician Liam’s prowess goes well beyond his Dublin roots, impressive not just for that amazing voice, but also for his mastery of piano, flute, harmonica, penny-whistle, bodhrán, and more.
And while still featuring with Hothouse Flowers – the band taking off in the mid-‘80s after U2’s Bono labelled them the ‘best unsigned band on the planet’, their biggest chart hits being 1988 debut 45 ‘Don’t Go’ and 1990 Johnny Nash cover, ‘I Can See Clearly Now’, their first three LPs all UK top-10 hits – as a solo performer, Gaelic speaker Liam also continues to wow audiences with a bit of traditional Irish folk, gospel, blues, soul, country, rock … you name it.
He feels his foundation in music came first from his mother and father, letting on, “My mother’s people were all piano players. My father could make you cry with a song.”
Soon discovering his own path, by the age of nine he found himself in different towns by virtue of the strength of his whistle and bodhrán playing and later mastery of unaccompanied singing in the traditional Irish style known as Sean Nós, explaining, “Our style of singing is about taking the pain of the people, of your neighbours and yourself, and making beauty out of it to get you through. Blues is also this. I play to soothe myself first. When I reach that feeling, that feeling travels with me of its own free will”.
But how’s it been these past 18 months or so? Did the dreaded coronavirus change the way he worked?
“Yeah, everything was cancelled. But that was alright – that’s like a clean slate. I took to walking and got into the habit of getting up on waking. I wasn’t lying in. I got up early every morning and got out of the house and found that to be a game-changer for me – something I needed.”
Therapeutic?
“Yes, to say the least!”

Has it been a productive time for you, with regards to writing or making music?
“Yeah, I co-created a bit of theatre, I recorded an album, I set the wheels in motion for a project with the National Concert Orchestra … so, busy, yes! And there was a lot of artwork as well.”
Is that you with a brush, a pencil, or both?
“Yeah, multi-media. I like to use natural pigment and acrylic. I don’t always use brushes. I might use a roller or a hard edge – sometimes that’s good for abstract work.”
Is that a private affair, or something you’re happy to share with the world?
“Well, it’s not something I feel I need to hide. But at the same time, it’s not linked to any commercial system … although I did meet a person with a space in town and she’s interested in hosting me with a visual show that I might make into a multi-media show. So I’m excited about that.”
Recently, I went back and re-watched his performance on the splendid BBC Scotland/BBC Four/RTÉ Ireland joint production, Transatlantic Sessions from 2009, with cracking star band accompanied takes on ‘Worry Not’ and ‘Work Song’. More recently, there have been internet shows from his own patch, with home these days a 15-minute Luas tram ride from Dublin, ‘pretty close, but quite green and also close to the mountains’. Has he been out and about playing a few shows recently?
“Yeah, a few, and loads of online stuff. We were supposed to play London on St Patrick’s Day in 2020, but decided we’d pull that. Your side of the water closed things down a bit later than ours, so we feasibly could have done it, and in retrospect I might have gone for it.”
I think you may have made the right call. It was a bit of a scrum around then.
“Well, it was a bit. I suppose we’ll just appreciate doing it when we do it. But it’s a funny old thing. It seems to be just another political game.”

I always had an affinity with Hothouse Flowers. And we’re not just talking the Greenhouse Effect here, even though that’s become more and more of an issue as the years are passing. Flicking back through my diaries, I was reminded that I first caught Hothouse Flowers live in June 1989 at Glastonbury Festival. A special time for me. Within three weeks I’d met my better half on a Turkish holiday, we’re still an item 32 years down the road, and those first three LPs were definitely part of our collective soundtrack..

“Oh very good! That’s always good to hear. It’s good to find your mate.”

Still Inspiring: Liam Ó Maonlaí, enjoying the musical journey, 30-plus years after Hothouse Flowers’ first hit

Do you recall much about that festival, also including the likes of Elvis Costello, Suzanne Vega, The Bhundu Boys, Fairground Attraction, and your pals, Martin Stephenson & The Daintees.

“Yeah, and {Martin} came on tour with us subsequent to that – that year or maybe the next. There was Fela Kuti also, Van the man, The Waterboys …”

Mike Scott too was a big inspiration on Liam and his bandmates back in the day, and I next saw them while on my backpacking world travels in February 1991, Down Under at Sydney St George’s RSL Club.

“Amazing!”

Have you special memories of those days? Were you good company as a band? Martin Stephenson suggested you were in our recent interview.

“Yeah, and just having the gift of music … music did all the talking for us. It was the consummation of our friendship, really. We weren’t always the best at talking, but a good gig … there’s nothing like it, to share an experience like that. And three of us are still together … and we’re very rich for having those experiences shared.”

Do you and your fellow Flowers tend to chat on the phone, or is it a case of turning up on the doorstep these days?

“Well, the friendship is on the stage actually, we don’t see much of each other bar significant life events these days. But when we do get to see each other, we’re really glad to. And that’s the way our friendship sort of works. There’ll be the odd phone call, alright, but …”

Does the conversation carry on where it last left off?

“Yeah, and there’s always great excitement when we get together. We’ve known each other for a long, long time now.”

To the point that you’re finishing each other’s sentences?

“Err, maybe … sometimes … or sometimes just stopping them dead in their tracks!”

And while I never got to see the three of them perform together, I loved your Alt band project in the mid-1990s with your Northern Irish housemate of the time, Andy White, and upstairs neighbour Tim Finn, of Split Enz and Crowded House fame. What’s more, my love for the resultant one-off 1995 LP, Altitude remains strong.

“Oh yeah! Well, that was something I … I always have this desire to create music from the moment, and I know I had it with the Flowers. But we were so tied with the formal side of recording that songs had to be ready before we went in the studio.

“That was all well and good, but I really hungered for a chance to go into the studio with some people and let the studio capture those moments of inspiration … instead of having those moments of inspiration and then trying to remember them.

“And they were willing to give us our space, and because we had spent a summer and a winter together – Andy, Tim and myself – and really had a fantastic time, we just had a great spontaneity with writing.”

It shows. And maybe it was the lack of pressure too. It sounded organic, and you were away from the record label ‘write, record, tour, and repeat’ treadmill, perhaps.

“It was just that the inspiration was allowed to happen in the studio. There was never too much pressure, even with the Flowers. It’s just that it had to be ready. And the idea of working with two other singers was great.”

Absolutely, and the diversity in your voices added something special.

“Yeah, I love to sing, and I love voices – no matter what shape a voice has. I really do love a voice.”

Well, I was going to say, I love your voice, and Tim’s work with his Split Enz and Crowded House and that special blend he has – in particular – with his brother Neil is amazing, but I also love the way you two and Andy gel. You head somewhere else completely, and it’s all great in different measures.

“Exactly!”

As a result of all that, I put on a compilation made in honour of the year 2000 arrival of my first-born, a song called ‘The Day You Were Born’ from that album. And it remains a personal favourite.

“Ah, great. A lot of people think that was written for my son, but it was written before he came along. I was very pleased with that song. That’s one of the few songs that I just wrote myself. I just sat down with an instrument and … carved it.”

Liam’s son, Cian, from his first marriage, is now 25, while his daughter with his French partner, Marion is now 15. Is that right the eldest has followed your career path?

“Yes, he’s great. I’m really proud of him. He’s got something … he’s got a little bit of what I have, but also has something from his mother’s side. His grandfather had a very quiet but like a volcanic presence, and my son has that as well.”

Cian is part of the group, Big Love, who this year released the impressive single, ‘Lily’. And once you know that association, there’s no denying it’s Liam’s lad. Not as if he’s taking advantage of that family link.

“It’s great to see somebody making their way … in their own way … and watching. They released a single and it really did well for them, publicly. It got a lot of exposure … and didn’t have a publicity machine behind it, apart from what they could drum up themselves. Even on the strength of that … it got a lot of interesting breaks, and they went into the studio with the (Irish) Chamber Orchestra last week. And that just came from the strength of the song.”

Alt Attitude: Old friends Andy, Liam and Tim, putting the world to rights in the mid-’90s, and still as fresh

It seems that the next generation has well and truly arrived. Only this summer gone, my youngest got to see an intimate show at The Continental in Preston featuring Inhaler, the band – selling out left, right and centre at present – fronted by Bono’s son, Elijah Hewson. Time truly flies.

“Oh yes! Time just doesn’t stop.”

Getting back to Alt, have you been in touch with Andy and Tim in recent times?

“I was. They sent me some stuff to see if I’d be interested in adding my bit to it. I never got around to it, but they ended up making a record, which they’ve asked me to do some artwork for. So that’s on its way.”

Is there a new record coming our way from you as well?

“Well, I went to Paris last year when there was a window of opportunity. We took a ferry over, my partner and daughter and I. We went over to see her family, but I was getting a lot in inspiration while I was here and was almost reluctant to go, as I felt this was where it was happening.

“But I couldn’t resist going over and contacted a woodwind player by the name of Renaud-Gabriel Pion, who plays bass clarinet, bassoon and a lot of medieval instruments. I just said, ‘Let’s make a record’, and he said yes.

“He had a little studio set-up in a little apartment at the top of a place in the middle of Paris, and we spent five days I think just playing together. And it was one of those records where a couple of musicians come together and just play … and that’s my favourite way of working, with no pre-arranged songs or melodies.

“A couple of times I had a few riffs I might add, but other than that we just played to each other, and came up with three hours or more of music. So that still has to be edited, and deciding what kind of a shape it’s going to take. It’s quite ambient and filmic. Trance-like, but we weren’t using any loops or beats, just our own rhythm.”

It sounds like it might even be a double album in the making.

“Well, if we decided to go with that formula, there might be a different way of releasing it. We’ll see. There’s also a folk magazine, RnR, and I put one of the tracks from that on to one of their monthly CDs.”

Going back to your own beginnings, dare I ask what your first band, The Complex, were like? Was it maybe fated that you’d go one way and your bandmates Kevin Shields and Colm Ó Cíosóig would take a very different path with what became My Bloody Valentine?

“Only as much as …musically, it wasn’t. We got on really well. I think they liked what I was bringing. It was just that I was about 15 and my Dad just said, ‘You’re not allowed to be in that band anymore’. I would have kept going, probably. I’m a kind of person that if I land on something, I kind of stick to it.

“With the Flowers, similarly, I might have left for all kinds of reasons, but I stuck with it for some reason. Sometimes the reasons that might trigger you to leave can be very earthly or ego-based, and sometimes you can look at the bigger picture and realise you should hang in there, for some bizarre reason.

“Somebody said one time there are no bad decisions – some might land you in awful situations but … there’s always learning. And I’ve come to the understanding that the object of the game is just to learn about yourself and how to shine in your life … and make the most of it.”

When Bono told Rolling Stone magazine about Hothouse Flowers being the best unsigned band on the planet, was it a shock to you, and did it all happen really quickly from there?

“Yeah, it was. And a lot of things happened really quickly … which wasn’t always that easy. There was a scramble for management and a ruthlessness in the business I hadn’t expected to see, and I hadn’t expected it to affect me in such a way. But again … always learning from the experience.

“When I heard, I said, ‘No way! You’re joking’. I came in from somewhere, into some building or other to meet one of the lads, and they said, ‘Have you heard, there’s a photo-shoot with Melody Maker tomorrow?’. What! Then there was that Rolling Stone magazine quote. But there it is.”

Flute Accompaniment: Jacquelyn Hynes will guest with Liam around the UK on his October 2021 solo tour

Is there frustration in a sense that the wider world stopped listening after the last Hothouse Flowers hit, despite you carrying on making great records? Or does that not fit the character of this laidback performer we know and love?

“No, it’s beautiful to feel that the whole world was hearing something you had to say or play, but I knew that once we’d pulled away from the management we had and also parted company with our record label, that we didn’t have that machine behind us. And you’re competing with everything that’s up there on every billboard.

“I’d love to come up with something that would resonate, but to a degree it would have to be of its own terms. Not my terms or anybody else’s, but the terms of the music itself. Who knows. The beauty of where I’m at now is that I can say yes to so many things.

“And from Friday on, I’m going to be extraordinarily busy until – I think – March. Kind of crazy, but you know … I’m up for it, I suppose, because it’s of my own design, for better or for worse. There’s a few curveballs in there for me too. I’m not a comfort zone person. I do believe that music has a way of getting itself through … even through the most unlikely avenues.

“And I’m going to create a piece of dance theatre with a Basque company starting in November, so that’ll be something else.”

So you have these live solo dates, then you’ll be straight into that?

“Pretty close. I’m going to Sweden as well. I’ve a gig there … and I’m going to do a tour with some Belgian musicians I’ve never met in my life! You just say yes as many times as you can and see where it leads!”

And for me it’s almost come full circle, my children now moving on to their own university and career paths … and you calling on my own adopted patch in Lancashire, a few miles up the road from me on the last night of your solo tour.

“Ah, brilliant!”

Fair Wind: The White Sail Band, from York, are also supporting Liam on his October solo tour in the UK

Is that right you have (Irish traditional flautist) Jacquelyn Hynes accompanying you on stage?

“She’s going to maybe join me for a tune or two. I’m not exactly sure how that’s all going to pan out yet though. That’s a complete unknown. I do about an hour and a half, but it’s different every night … as are the Flowers gigs. We never write a setlist … and I never write a setlist.”

Will there be some new Hothouse Flowers shows coming soon then?

“Oh, there will. And we’re going to be in London on St Patrick’s Day. That could be the next one.”

And if you had a chance to go back in the time machine to early 1985 and give a little sage advice to 20-year-old Liam Ó Maonlaí, busking on the streets of Dublin with schoolmate Fiachna Ó Braonáin, what would you tell yourself?

“I probably wouldn’t listen, and I really don’t know. My Dad and myself, we had a tough enough relationship. I loved him – he’s gone now – but I suppose to look at the basis of that a bit more than anything else, or just to maybe make a few more mistakes. I made loads of mistakes, but probably should have made more.”

Well, it’s been good chatting, although I have to ask … that ticking I’m hearing now and again in the background – you’re either setting up a metronome for a recording session, or in a car, making occasional left and right turns or pulling over.

“Yeah, I find I can talk better when I’m in the car. And the phone works better in the car.”

I thought as much. I could hear the indicators going now and again.

“Yeah, I was negotiating the rhythms of the road!”

Reach Out: Liam gets down to it on stage, the Hothouse Flowers spirit still evident, with or without his band

As well as Jacquelyn Hynes, Liam also has a tour support band in York-based trio White Sail, with his show on the final date in Penwortham also involving John Clayton, aka Hungry Bentley, whose fourth full-band LP, Exposition, produced by Nigel Stonier (The Waterboys, Fairport Convention, Thea Gilmore) is newly out.

Remaining October UK dates: Greystones, Sheffield (Tue 5^th); Cubley Hall Hotel, Penistone (Wed 6^th); Music & Arts Centre, Barnoldswick (Thu 7^th); The Jazz Club, Louth (Fri 8^th); Wreckingball Records & Books, Hull (Sat 9^th); Black Swan, York (Sun 10^th, 2.30pm); The Carlton Club, Manchester (Mon 11^th); The Venue, Penwortham (Tue 12^th).

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged ALT, Andy White, big Love, Bono, Dublin, Fiachna Ó Braonáin, Glastonbury Festival, Hothouse Flowers, Hungry Bentley, Inhaler, Jacquelyn Hynes, Kevin Shields, Liam Ó Maonlaí, Martin Stephenson, My Bloody Valentine, Penwortham, The Complex, The Waterboys, Tim Finn, Transatlantic Sessions, U2, White Sail | Leave a comment

Juggling life’s priorities, comedy style – the Steve Royle interview

Posted on October 1, 2021 by writewyattuk

Beanbag Bounty: Steve Royle leaps to his own conclusions ahead of our chat (Photo: Andy Hollingworth)

It’s been quite a year for Steve Royle, appearances on prime-time ITV show Britain’s Got Talent attracting a whole new audience, his entertaining performances wowing celebrity judges and TV audiences alike, ensuring a top-three finish after a public vote.

And now he’s finally back on the road for a frantic dose of wholesome family entertainment fusing stand-up, slapstick and comic routines. Or ‘a feast of entertainment for both eyes and ears of the young and old’, as his promoters put it.

Away from the acting, writing, comedy and juggling, there’s also presenting, with a Gillard Award secured for his BBC Radio Lancashire show, a performer who was part of Peter Kay’s 16-night Phoenix Nights Live charity show at Manchester Arena having down the years supported some of the UK’s most popular comics, also including former WriteWyattUK interviewee Dave Spikey and Roy Walker.

Steve’s CV includes parts in hit TV comedies Car Share, Phoenix Nights, Max and Paddy’s Road to Nowhere, Peter Kay’s Britain’s Got the Pop Factor and Stand Up Britain, plus straight acting roles in The Things You Do for Love: I Still Believe – a key moment for him, as we’ll find out – and Magnolia.

And while the pandemic delayed his title role launch in a national tour of Naturally Insane: The Life of Dan Leno, that’s set for its West End premiere soon, after a successful Lytham Hall run. But first there’s his surely ironically-titled debut UK tour, so far involving dates in Barnsley, Middlesbrough, Barnard Castle, Leeds, Northwich, Camberley and Newcastle-upon-Tyne,as well as on his home patch at Chorley Theatre (with another show due there in late January) and Burnley Mechanics, with Blackpool Grand and Southport Comedy Festival coming soon.

As those who saw his Britain’s Got Talent appearances now know (cards on the table here – I’d never watched the show before, but made a special exception for Steve, and from what I saw of his fellow finalists, he deserved to win by a mile), entertainment runs in the family, with his partner Janet – an actor and a drama/singing tutor – and three daughters making live TV cameos with him in that final.

What’s more, I can testify after my initial morning call to the winner of the inaugural Red Rose Awards Entertainer of the Year gong that his youngest has the comedy genes too, her recorded answer-machine message including a mischievous, “I’m 11 years old, what could possibly go wrong?”.

“Ah, she’s good, in’t she? A good secretary, that.”

Last time we spoke, I pointed out, he only had one daughter, although the arrival of the next was imminent. But now Daisy and Rosie have been joined by the pre-discussed Lucy. Time flies, eh.

“Yeah … obviously she was the accident.”

Well, I know how that feels as the youngest of five, with neat two-year gaps between the older four then a five-and-a-half year wait for me.

Royle Performance: Steve Royle takes juggling to a new level altogether (Photo: Andy Hollingworth)

“Oh, that’s a ‘book him in for the snip the next day’ accident, that!”

Steve, originally from Milnrow, Rochdale, was back home later than planned that morning after chatting to the presenters on BBC Breakfast. I missed that but caught his pal Dave Spikey on the red sofa not long before, paying tribute to fellow ex-Eight Out of Ten Cats panellist Sean Lock. And that led to our brief chat about a respected, razor-sharp comedy great, lost far too young.

“He was someone you really admired as a comedian, and someone Dave knew really well.”

By all accounts, Sean was every bit as funny off stage and screen as on.

“Yeah, you tend to like acts that are very different from yourself, and he was quite surreal in some respects. I remember watching him thinking I’d love to be able to do that, make it feel as effortless as he did.”

Steve remains in touch with Dave Spikey, the pair ‘long overdue a meal out’ together. As for me, last time I saw Steve in person was in November 2013, in an interviewer’s role at Chorley Little Theatre for an Ebb & Flo bookshop event marking the publication of Becoming Johnny Vegas, alongside the much-loved St Helens comic.

“As far back as that? Wow. That was a mad night, wasn’t it? I think I left at three in the morning, and he still hadn’t finished signing all the books!”

Funny you should say that. Rumour has it there are still people queuing for the bar, waiting to have their books signed by Johnny.

“It wouldn’t surprise me! Unbelievable.”

After a couple of hours, I gave up, leaving my copy with the theatre staff, who promised they’d get it back to me the following day. And they did, Johnny obliging overnight.

“A very sensible move! I’ve spoken about that night to so many people as an example of just how lovely he is. You didn’t just get your book signed, you got a personal 10-minute experience with Johnny Vegas and a personalised book. I think I was only hanging around to get my copy signed. He said, ‘I’ll do yours last’. Bloody hell! But it was a very elaborate copy when he finally did it.”

As for my last Royle command performance, that was supporting fellow local Mr Spikey at that same venue on his Overnight Success tour in July 2003. He repeated that role on Dave’s following Living the Dream tour, but it’s the earlier one that seems more apt now, 18 years on, following Steve’s own late elevation to the limelight. I mean, it’s been blistering, I suggested, the speed of his rise to national treasure.

Int’ News: Dave Spikey as Gordon Garden and Johnny Vegas as Lewis Donat in 2005’s Dead Man Weds, based on a newspaper very close to the one where Steve’s interviewer was based (ITV/Red Productions)

“Yeah! There I was on the big irony of Dave’s Overnight Success tour, and now … well, if I didn’t have this surname … instead we’ve made this the Royle Variety Performance UK tour.”

Talking of trips down Memory Lane, I recently unearthed some cuttings from my newspaper past, including a Lancashire Evening Post feature/interview with Steve from August 2005, when he’d just returned from the Edinburgh Fringe with his Slaughterhouse Live co-performers, including Martin Pemberton, a fellow Lancashire lad who worked alongside then took over Steve’s chief jester role at Camelot Theme Park.

Then there was an autumn feature for the Lancashire Design and Living glossy magazine, Steve – also a panto regular – and Janet inviting photographer Paul Simpson and I to nose around their house, the tale of which I still dine out on 16 years later.

“Ah, I still occasionally see that article! The photographer also took a picture of a shoe that had just been moved to put it out of the way, part of a tidy-up, and it got featured. Ha!”

I shall now attempt to retell my story … in as few words as possible. First, let me set the scene. As we walked in, Steve and Janet made us feel welcome, making us a cuppa, and after a lengthy chat, Paul – his next job elsewhere already lined up – got to work while we carried on chatting in the kitchen, me taking notes as he walked around, taking various shots of treasured objects and wandering from room to room.

Then, Steve invited me upstairs (don’t worry, it’s not that kind of story), and with Paul joining us, led us to his daughter’s bedroom, where there was a lovely mural on the wall, which Steve told us was painted by Martin Pemberton.

“Do you remember Martin? He was the jester who took over from me at Camelot Theme Park when I left.”

I did remember him, and we talked about Martin for a while, Steve then explaining that the caravan he previously lived in at the Charnock Richard visitor attraction (long since closed now) was then taken over by Martin, but was in a bit of a state, less and less habitable as time wore on. If you weren’t careful, he pointed out, you could put your foot right through the rusting floor and do yourself a major injury. He then added, ‘Consequently, it was condemned, and Martin had to move out. In fact, he lives here now.”

And with that, Steve reached across to a big in-built cupboard, opened the door, and there was Martin, peering out of the dark from inside, with a casual nod before he greeted us both with a deadpan, ‘Alright’, Steve then closing the cupboard door, before adding, ‘Anyway, which room next, fellas?’, walking ahead of us while we stood there, mouths agape, wondering what the hell had just happened. A few seconds later, Steve returned, cracking up, opened the cupboard door again for Martin to walk out and join us, myself and Paul in a state of shock, soon crying with laughter.

I didn’t know Paul before that day, but he seemed to be in a bit of a mess after that, occasionally knocking over items as we continued our tour, the two of us trying to get our minds back on the job, Steve also in fits as Martin headed off to the kitchen to talk to Janet, myself and Paul now and again staring at each other, breaking into giggles.

Sign On: Michael Pennington aka Johnny Vegas, still signing dedications to this day (Photo: Diane Gunning)

“Ah, that’s got to go down as the best practical joke ever, that! I’d forgotten about that until you started talking about it!”

Indeed, and there I was with around 2,000 words to play with at the time, wondering how I could possibly re-tell that tale in print.

As for Martin today, I had a brief look at his online acting CV via the imdb website before picking up the phone, and it seems he remains prolific, not least as a stuntman.

“He’s done amazingly well. I saw him a couple of weeks ago and he’s done all sorts recently, including a new Tim Minchin musical film version of Matilda, and doubling as Phil Mitchell in EastEnders.”

He must have filled out then, I’m guessing.

“Ha! Because he was small, he used to do kids’ stunt doubling, but now it’s big fat bald men. Things have changed for him quite considerably!”

Are you still in touch with the rest of your Slaughterhouse (‘laughter with an ‘s’, as they put it) Live mates?

“Yeah, we have a Slaughterhouse WhatsApp group, and one day we’ll all get back out there … once we’ve decided what acts we can still do. Ha!”

One mentioned in my feature was your character, Alan Sonar.

“Yeah, a blind juggler and inventor of tabasco eyedrops!”

Indeed, described as Phoenix Nights meets Vic & Bob’s Big Night Out, although I never quite managed to see that show live.

“Well, when we reconvene and have a gig, I’ll make sure you’re the first to know about it.”

Are you still in the same house in Chorley’s ‘hill country’ (as we used to call it in print)?

“I am, and still love it here. It’s beautiful, I’m dead lucky. It’s such a lovely area.”

And now you’re back on the road. Has it been tough, this past 18 or so months? And were these dates a long time coming, rearranged, and so forth?

“I think the hardest thing was the uncertainty. When we first went into lockdown, we felt it would be maybe a couple of months, and that worried me, thinking I could probably survive until summer. Then it got beyond that.

Drink Up: Steve Royle in a Lancashire Evening Post feature from September 2015, written by your scribe

“But that’s where Britain’s Got Talent came in. It gave me something to focus on. Otherwise, I think I’d have gone proper mad – I wouldn’t have known what to do with myself. I was lucky in that sense.”

Talking mostly to musicians, I get the impression those who missed out on live performances built up nerves over that period, with too much time to reflect and over-think maybe, performers thinking they’ll have forgotten how to do it after so long.

“There is that, but I’ve also noticed audiences are so much more forgiving, more responsive. And they’re willing you to do well. But there will come a time where I’ll think things are back to normal when I go on stage and get the miserable ones sat staring at me.”

With the hard-boiled ‘C’mon, make me laugh, lad’ folded arms approach?

“Yeah, soon as I get back to one of those gigs, I’ll know, ‘Okay, things are back to normal now, I’ve got the miseries back!”

The public voting for you in droves for Britain’s Got Talent suggests there’s definitely an audience out there for what you do. But a ‘debut UK tour’? That seems hard to get my head round. I mean, you’re no stranger to the circuit, surely.

“Ah, well you can only imagine how I feel about that then, can’t you! As a support act for so many years, finally seeing my own name up there and getting brochures sent from so many areas of the country …

“I’ve always had a bit of a following in the North West – such as the Grand Theatre in Blackpool, where I’ve done panto for so many years – but when you’re selling tickets in places like Poole and Exeter … I’ve just seen a message this morning from someone saying, ‘Just seen you on the telly this morning and we’ve booked tickets for Exeter’. Then there’s North Yorkshire, and so on. It’s suddenly put me on the national map, this ‘local celebrity’.”

It must have been a shock when you put your specs on, realising Barnard Castle was on the schedule.

“That really did make me laugh! I don’t know if my agent put that one on deliberately. Last year, people were tagging me in comments on Twitter, saying, ‘What’s Dominic Cummings doing on Britain’s Got Talent?’. If I have one regret during the pandemic, it’s not getting in touch with him sooner, taking the flak for that. If I could have bribed him for at least a quarter of a million-winning prize, we’d both be in a better place today.”

Dare I ask if success has changed you? Will there be a few blue gags to drive shocked parents away, muttering, ‘That wasn’t what I expected’?

“I’m trying to bill it as a family show, so there won’t be anything too offensive, but I’ll continue to try and entertain all levels all the time … and throw something in for the Dads! It sounds ridiculous, but I just have to be myself on stage, be that clown I’ve always been.

Magpies Mad: Steve Royle wore his Chorley FC top with pride (if not back to front) during their FA Cup run

“And I’ve not got too big for my boots. I’ll still chat to people after. My Dad gave me the best bit of grounding when the final came on, with John Courtenay – who won it – playing these tunes on the piano. I phoned Mum and Dad up just after the results, and Mum was full of praise and, ‘Well done, son, I’m so proud of you, Steve.’ She couldn’t believe I didn’t get anything for third. I had to explain it’s not a church raffle.

“Then it was, ‘Anyway, your Dad wants a word now …’. He came ont’ phone and his first words to me were, ‘I told you that you should have kept up those piano lessons.’ And when you’ve got a grounding like that …”

Was that the piano I saw at yours back in the day, the one belonging to your Grandpa?

“Oh yeah, it was! And it’s still there. That was my Grandpa on my Mum’s side.”

It seems to me that your daughters could be following in your footsteps, career-wise.

“It’s the youngest one who’s the very quick-witted one in the family. My eldest, still a baby when you popped around, flees the nest in September, going off to university to study at the London School of Fashion. The middle one’s into dance, so at least staying theatrical. She’s a big dancer. And the youngest is the comedian in the family. She’s always funny and does some amazing characters.”

Where does she get that from?

“I don’t know.”

Mum’s a drama teacher, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Blame the mother. Don’t blame me!”

When you said the middle one’s into dance, I thought you said she was in Gdansk. I hadn’t expected that.

“Ha! Yeah, she’s big on Polish history. And she’s off to Sunderland the week after!”

The lad’s still got it. And what’s his Camelot Theme Park alter-ego, Mad Edgar up to these days?

“Probably still in some medieval hovel somewhere. I dread to think what he’s up to. Actually, that’s how I know how long people have known me. If it’s from Britain’s Got Talent, they say, ‘Hi Steve,’ and if it’s from Camelot days, I get, ‘Hi Edgar!’. King Arthur still lives half a mile from me … and I still call him King. You never lose respect for someone like that.”

Whereas his Camelot friend Martin Pemberton made it to the big screen, his past roles including one in Cold Mountain, Steve seems happy with past small screen ‘bit-parts’, not least The Things You Do For Love: I Still Believe, a Granada TV drama about crooner Ronnie Hilton and his affair with a dancer, as it was on that set when Steve met Janet.

Masked Man: Steve Royle in disguise for Britain’s Got Talent, looking nothing like Dominic Cummings

As for his friendship with Peter Kay, Steve was working the nights he staged his charity comeback this summer, but remained in touch with the Bolton comic during the pandemic.

“We had some proper chats, and he was very helpful, giving me tips on Britain’s Got Talent. And it’s just brilliant seeing him back at it.”

Do you think there will ever be a return for Phoenix Nights (Steve having appeared not only in Peter’s Car Share in 2017, but also as an uncredited ‘Crap Juggler’ 20 years ago, which at least makes for a better credit than the one he got for his role as a ‘Wanking Santa’ in 2004 TV movie Christmas Lights)?

“I doubt it very, very much. It’s the dream we’d all very much love to be fulfilled, but I think he’s so busy, going on to do so well with Car Share, his tours, and other things. I don’t see it ever happening, really. I doubt it.”

Well, if all goes to pot and the stage engagements dry up, there’s always a DIY shop opening for you where you started back in Rochdale, I guess.

“Yeah, I can still cut a key. And I’m still a dab hand with a metre rule!”

You told me when I first interviewed you, you had dreams one day of owning a restaurant chain, probably one where all the dishes arrive in threes.

“Ha! Well, there’s so many TV programmes with chefs nowadays, I realise it’s a much tougher job than I thought. When you get in late from gigs, like I do, there’s three things on telly – old editions of Homes Under the Hammer, Naked Attraction – getting to watch people naked in boxes – or Gordon Ramsay visiting horror restaurants. And do you know what – that’d be my restaurant. I will certainly continue to frequent lots of restaurants and bars, but I won’t be looking to run one myself.”

How about your title role in Naturally Insane: The Life of Dan Leno – is that still set to happen, including its prestigious West End premiere? Or did the pandemic kill off that opportunity?

“We actually did the show again at Lytham Hall, and we’re about to be back in the West End, premiering that in November. And it’s something I absolutely love doing. It’s a real passion, and it’s just nice to act. It’s alright being me, but I like being someone else … even if it’s a madman in a lunatic asylum!”

It’s certainly an intriguing true story (the Lytham Hall production having also featured Janet). I recall an article about Dan Leno that made an impression on me as a teenager, not just about his legacy but also later ghostly sightings of him in the West End.

“Yeah, the Drury Lane Theatre, apparently.”

Or apparitionally, perhaps. I also recall reading a theory that perhaps Dan’s genius moved on to Stan Laurel, then Peter Sellers.

“Yes, and Roy Hudd had quite an affinity. He was doing the play with us until he sadly died last year. I think I have that affinity too. Maybe he’s put a little of himself in all of us. He was so influential. People don’t realise, because of when he was around, but he was a big influence on the likes of Charlie Chaplin and, as you say, Stan Laurel, who then went on to influence so many others. We probably have more reason than we realise to be grateful to the guy.”

Finally, these days you’re credited as an actor, writer, comedian, juggler and award-winning radio presenter. Which description sits best with you?

“Ah … Dad! Or – having three daughters, taxi driver is probably the best description for me now. That’s what I tend to be doing most of the time now, between gigs, ferrying them around.”

You’ll no doubt be missed in that respect when you’re back on the road then. In the meantime, I’m pleased to see your own overnight success finally come to fruition, and hopefully it won’t be 15-plus years before our next catch-up.

“Yeah, try and make it shorter, will you? Don’t come and visit me in a home, saying, ‘I’m sorry it took me so long’. I don’t want to be wheeled out for our next interview!”

Balls Up: Steve Royle, keeping his eyes off the ball, in a town near you (Photo: Andy Hollingworth)

Steve Royle’s October dates continue this weekend, reaching Northallerton The Forum tonight (Fri 1^st, 7.30pm, 01609 776 230), then Blackpool Grand Theatre (Sat 2^nd, 7.30pm, 01253 290190) and Bilston Town Hall (Sun 3^rd, 7.30pm). He then heads for Norwich Playhouse (Wed 6^th, 7.30pm, 01603 598598), Lowestoft Marina Theatre (Sat 9^th, 7.30pm, 01502 533200), Peterborough Key Theatre (Thu 14^th, 7.30pm, 01733 207 239), Southport Comedy Festival (Sun 17^th, 2pm), Eastbourne Royal Hippodrome (Fri 15^th, 7.30pm, 01323 802020), Hayes Beck Theatre (Tue 19^th, 7.30pm, 0208 561 8371), Exeter Corn Exchange (Wed 20^th, 8pm, 01392 665 938), Bridgwater McMillan Theatre (Thu 21^st, 7.30pm, 01278 556 677), Taunton Brewhouse (Friday 22^nd, 7.30pm, 01823 283 244), London Leicester Square Theatre (Sun 24^th, 7.30pm, 0207 734 2222), Llanelli Theatr Ffwrnes (Tue 26^th, 7.30pm, 0345 226 3510), and Poole Lighthouse (Thu 28^th, 7.45pm, 01202 280000).

And next January, you can see Steve at Kettering Lighthouse (Thu 12^th January, 7.30pm, 01536 414141, ) and his Chorley Theatre return (Sat 29^th January, 7.30pm, 01257 264 362). For all the latest from Steve Royle, head to his website, and keep in touch via Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Britain's Got Talent, Camelot Theme Park, chorley, Chorley Theatre, Dan Leno, Dave Spikey, Johnny Vegas, Lytham Hall, Martin Pemberton, Peter Kay, Phoenix Nights, Radio Lancashire, Rochdale, Sean Lock, Slaughterhouse Live, steve royle | Leave a comment

writewyattuk

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Juggling life’s priorities, comedy style – the Steve Royle interview

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