This was like another big, big black mark to stick next to me, to say he's a wrongman.
Hello again, and welcome to Midnight Chats, a podcast of informal interviews with leading musicians, published weekly at midnight to suit the mood of these very informal conversations. This week's episode is hosted by me Stuart Stubbs, editor of Loud.
And Quiet magazine.
Tonight, my guest is Bernard Butler, and here is what I've decided you need.
To know about him.
In nineteen ninety four, Bernard famously walked out of the band Swede, who at that point were kind of on the top of the world, had already released their self titled debut album and their second dog Man Start was almost complete at a point when Bernard decided to walk away from the group. He spent the twenty eight years since being something of a king collaborator as both a
songwriter and producer. The artists he's worked with include Edwin Collins, Nana Cherry, The Libertines, Pet Shop Boys, Paloma Faith, The Cribs, Tim Booth, Roy Orbison, and Tricky, to name just a few. Perhaps most famously of all, though Bernard co produced and co wrote part of Duffy's debut album Rock Ferry, for which he won a Grammy in two thousand and eight.
Having now met Bernard to record this episode of Midnight Chats, I get the feeling those sort of big awards are not really what he's all about, and we do talk a little bit about his unorthodox approach to his music career. We also spend a decent chunk of our time talking about one song in particular, which Bernard wrote and released
with David McColman called Yes. That was straight after he left Swede, and I've added a link to the song in the show notes of this episode for you to either reacquaint yourself with it or perhaps hear it for the first time. Maybe you want to do that now before you carry on, or maybe save it till the end, But either way, it's always a treat to hear Yes.
By McColeman and Butler.
Bernard's newest work, though, is an album with singer and actor Jesse Buckley, called for All Our Days that Tear the Heart. It came out just a couple of weeks ago in mid June twenty twenty two. It's a lovely record and Jesse's voice is incredible on it. It reminds me a little bit of Laura Marlin, a friend of the podcast, of course, as is Bernard's old bandmatee Brett Anderson.
I've linked to.
Our episodes with both of those artists below because I am an opportunist, and that's about as much as I think you need to know. If you enjoy the episode, please do tell a friend and share the podcast around. It really helps us out. And if you really enjoy it, there is also a link down there where you can make a small donation to help the running costs of this show. This is Bernard Butler on Midnight Chats, episode
one hundred and six. You know, I always used to start this podcast asked, because of the name, asking people if they're nighttime people, if they're nocturnal and by nature. And I stopped asking that question mainly because it's quite a bad question, but also because we're interviewing musicians. They all just said yes because they tend to be touring and it's a it's a nighttime pursuit. But as a man who tends to make records more than two of them heavily.
Are you? How about you? How do how is this question valid?
All of a sudden, I don't stay up all night, No, for sure, never really did. To be honest, I don't like it. No, I'm pretty my sort of creative. It sounds really pretentious about that. You'll create a moment quite a lot of the time are first thing in the morning. I'm pretty good to have wide awake with with ideas and then want to run back. And then I sort of slump in the middle of the day. So not really nolternal. I mean I stay up.
What do I do?
I mean, I never go to sleep before about half eleven. I don't know what standard or not. My wife is a teacher and she goes out to battle at six point thirty every morning, and I see it go off on a bike, and she's just like an absolute trooper, and so she's always asleep before me for obvious reasons. And so I tend to sort of, yeah, just watch
nonsense TV and weird documentaries and stuff. But I know I'm not somebody who'd want to step I really don't like seeing the light like darts turn into light.
I mean neither.
I have a real problem with that. And so when I was young and we did stupid things. That always was a real bother for me.
Yeah, it always I'm exactly the same. I always felt like it had ruined the next day. The next day is just a rite off. Now, as soon as you see the sun exactly.
Yeah, I was okay staying up late, but if you saw that happened, you thought, oh, no, I've done this wrong. I've done this again, you know, And so I really don't like that. I don't like staying up. I don't like waking up in the night, and I tend to get I don't know if it's an age thing, but I definitely get at this point in life if I if I wake, you get real hebgb's and really irrational thoughts. And I think post COVID actually, and having had that
at least twice, it's definitely something that affected me. Waking up and having very irrational thoughts that really scare me. And I've written a lot about that. Actually, that that kind of period, and then you get to the next morning you just think, Jesus, what the hell was I thinking?
I mean, what am I on about? You know?
But things that I'm not talking about dreams or nightmares and thinking being wide awake and just not having a grip on reality. So I really don't like it. No, I really like sleep, and I really love just a proper good night's sleep.
So you tend to You're in bed at half eleven, and then you wake up and are you straight in the studio because you've got a studio at home?
Yeah? I work from home.
Yeah, so do you? Is that your first you go straight to Sue and you get and as you say, most of your kind of good ideas come in the morning.
An awful lot of it. Yeah.
And my studios next to the shower, and it's not unusual for me to come out of the shower or run the shower, which is even worse, and then think I'll have a fiddle and then end up thinking I've run the shower for twenty minutes and not I'm still in my pants, you know, and or something stupid like that. Yeah, because I sort of feel awake at that moment, really alive. Just picture that.
It's a beautiful image. It's a beautiful image. Yesterday, knowing that we were meeting today, I reread an interview that you gave our magazine actually in twenty fifteen. It was around the time that you were doing the reissue of Sounds of the Sound of Calman and Butler, and it's a really good interview. I forgot how good it was, but there was a line in it that you said that really made me laugh. That said you said, if a red label ever asked me to do anything, I
always do the compolar opposite. Hmmm, Well is that still the case. Well, it depends what it is. If it's doing the Loud and Quiet podcast, then I hear, yeah, say no, yeah, probably can't imagine the context of a few years ago, but probably what I was referring to is the sort Well, I think it's a good it's a good thing to have a spirit of you could call it rebellion's which is a little bit, you know, a little bit potentious, probably not quite true, but I
mean it's questioning. I like to question things, you know, and I like to challenge things, for sure. Yeah, I think at the moment, you know, at the moment, I've got a record company around me and working with the project of Jesse Buckley and who were just the dream they are. Everyone is fantastic and I really really enjoy
and really trust. I think it's a situational trust you know, you've become very very quickly aware around people who you trust, and you trust style and taste and ideas, and from there, there's definitely been points when it's been really healthy for me to not trust those situations. And of course, as you grow by not trusting other people, you have to formulate your own ideas and your own vision, and I think that's entirely healthy. So I always think with young people,
I always encourage them that. Quite often, if I'm asked to work with a young person, you know, a young singer or a writer or something like that. What really irritates me is if a record company with the attached email or manager attached emails saying, you know, can you give them some direction, you know, and give them some vision? And I just said, have you asked them what their vision is? Because I bet you haven't. You know, you're you're asking old geezer to you know, do that. But
everybody's got it. It's about having the the guts to articulate that vision. And we all have creative ideas. Whoever we are, whatever we do in life, we all have potential and it's about tapping into it. So I just always encourage that with as as an artist to challenge myself and challenge everyone around me and challenge my decisions. I just have a checklist of things that I'm always thinking, have I checked that side of what I'm doing in
a certain situation? And that you get that from experience and learning. It's not It sounds more. It sounds patronizing to say that about a label or something, but really I think it's about using people's strengths.
You know.
So is that the first thing you say to an artist when they come to you when you're going to work together. How does that is that? The first question you say is what is your vision? What do you want to do? Where do you see this going?
I don't know.
I don't ask the question. I try and find out. I try and I try and see if it comes out. It's not like something you want to write down a piece of paper, and you know, it's not like an interview, and you want to see if that's evolving, and normally
it is. You often see it not evolving. You often see that somebody is searching for for example, you know, searching for a hit record or something, or a catchy song or something that gets me on the radio, makes me famous and stuff, in which case I just say bye because you've come to the wrong bloke.
Do you do you get that is that I would you receive an email that said that, for example.
Not an email that but you do an artist? Might? You know?
It might evolve that that's what they're looking for, you know. They want to think everything to be almost And I think that's that's a.
Problem with.
Songwriting in the in the modern pop age that nobody, nobody looks for albums. They just looks for track after track after track. Can you look for as many possibilities of getting something attractive on radio on streaming as possible?
You don't.
Ever, most people aren't searching for that interesting piano track on track seven. They're looking for every single song, every single experience to have the maximum commercial potential. And so if you're if I find myself in that situation, I just sort of think I either battle against it and try and do something different, and normally it just doesn't work out for me.
In terms of that quote about going the opposite way of what the record label would like you to do. Sometimes, has it ever got you in real trouble?
Trouble? Probably I've been in lots of trouble. Yeah, probably, I can't think of anything. I can't think of any specific examples, but yeah, you have to kick against things quite a lot of the time, probably a lot more when I was younger. But I just feel, I mean, where I'm at the moment, to be honest, in the last ten years, I'm sort of in control of everything that I do, and I just do my own thing, really,
and I don't have those situations. Whenever a record company becomes involved now is because they want to work with something that I'm I'm already in that position where it's created, so they come to me in a way, you know, or or in the sense that they want to work with what I've got, you know, and people still of know they know who I am by now. Yeah, so I don't think it's a problem, but it so I don't get into trouble.
No, a lot.
I don't get into trouble these days in that sense. No, probably have done in the past in yeah, various ways, trying to get out of doing podcasts or we never continue used to have them, but that kind of stuff.
Reading that old interview that you did for the mag one of the I learned a few things in it actually, and one of the things I learned because as I say, you were specifically talking about the Mcarman above the record. I didn't realize at the time. I think I was probably just a bit too young to be paying too much attention to it. But I didn't realize that the
album came out originally after you'd split up. You put out the double A side single was an extension of the fact that I remember when you did that project and released Yes and.
What was the other side? You do you do?
The whole idea of that was you didn't want to tour, you didn't want to have merch.
You didn't want to have a band name. You see, I got into a lot of trouble then, Yeah.
Right, okay, yeah, so that was such I mean, that's something that that even now no one would really kind of dare to do. I don't think, but I mean, as I imagine back then, there was a lot of pushback about that moment. Did you just say like, okay, well actually this one wasn't what I was going to ask, but did how did how did that talk go? Did you just say, look, we're not we're not doing that. We've got these songs and we're just releasing.
Well, I mean really at that time, me and David So we wrote this song, and I'd been in a successful group or a group where there was very a heightened sort of you know, public spectacle if you like, you know, and and and so everything was very in the public eye and very standard, if you like. And so I just wanted to do something that was the complete opposite, which is, I feel is a very natural thing to do, way to look at things, how to get away and just just do what you like doing
and be incredibly creative and pure about it. And it was part of a process which I'm still on, you know, of trying to find the pure essence of what you do when you create something, and the pure integrity of something.
So we just wanted to make like one of those Northern soul records where you just get like a what do they call it, a disco sleeve with just a hole in the middle and somebody's name penciled on it, and just you put it on and it's just sets the world on fire, you know, just lights up your stereo in this beautiful way, and you don't know who it is, and you don't know what they look like, and you never got to see them live or anything, but you just have this mysterious piece of beautiful pop music.
That was the That was the kind of principle. David had been in a group as well. I'd been in the group. We didn't want to carry those that baggage in along to what we did, and we just had this.
We just made this. We went off and did it on our own. Anyway.
Nobody even knew we were doing it, and to be honest, at the time that it became a bit of a scramble about who wanted to do it. David record Company didn't want to put it out, but initially because they wanted to put a solo record out by David and that was their project, their big grand project. And so they sat on it for a long time and people started to hear it and just loved it, and it was a really reluctant thing that they ended up being
put out. It took like six months, which in those days was a very long time towards sit on something for it to come out, and by that by the time it came out, I kind of moved on right, you know. I was like, all right, that's the way I felt about at the time, but you weren't really interested in this, so I'm off and I'll do something else. And they were just like, no, no, wait a minute, wait a minute, we want to do this. We think this will work. And they hadn't really got a hand a
handle on David's solo. How to market David's as a solo something like that. Kay, it happened, and so it was really it's pretty insulting I felt at the time, you know, and so I just thought so when it came to releasing it, we they panicked and said, can you do some more songs?
You know?
And we said sure, okay, when we did some B sides what you'd call B sides for the singles, and we said, well, we'll make yes and you do two different singles. We'll do that, but you know, that's all we're doing. And we and we went into a studio. We did a couple at home, and I didn't know what I was doing it, literally didn't know what I was doing with recording, and I recorded my bathroom and then we did a few a studio that spent a
day recording. So that's really how it came out, and that's it, and so these were all put together, they were there. They were actually fantastic fun We were you know, we really love those songs. In the end, they had done such such a spirit of just like, just do something, do it quickly, get it done, and then move on, no plans at all, and that's why they were that there was never an album. And when You Do, Yes came out and and it was it was a hit,
you know, people liked it. And then eventually You Do came out as well, the second one, the follow up, and they were just like, where's the album? Well, there wasn't it now. You didn't want to put this out. You know that that was never the plan. You know, it wasn't the plan, you know, and you didn't want anything to do with this. So you know, now it's a bit late. And that's the way I felt about
it at the time. If you know, what if that happened now, but I'd probably think, hmm, okay, all right, well you could have said that, but okay, let's kind of sort things that, let's try and work this out. But I was, you know, I was young, and I was an idiot and or just having fun, you know, just like that age, and I just couldn't be asked if I'm honest, you know, I just thought, you know, and I found I just I was a bit sort of peed off with the fact that they just weren't interested.
And I also thought, there's something's super cool about sticking to the plan that Okay, well I'm not going to do that and I'm going to stay. And I'm so proud that I did that. Yeah, absolutely, you.
Know what I mean.
Yeah, it got me into a lot of trouble, like a lot of trouble. At the time, it was a nightmare. It got to be into trouble with daved, Me and David into trouble. We fell out about the whole thing because David obviously just was stuck in the middle and didn't know which way to go. And at that time it became very tense for both us because neither of us knew what we wanted to do, except we both loved this thing that we'd done, but we didn't know.
He wanted to do his record and I want to do mine, and and yet we were both being forced. So we got into a lot of trouble. But I'm looking back and I just so it's a proud stand of mine. A standoff that I'm really proud of. Yeah, particularly when I was young and I was under immense pressure and I took a lot of shit over it.
Just do you mean just from like the label side of things, or from fans and friends or were.
They all just behind it?
I mean there weren't any fans because we didn't do anything, okay, so you know, it wasn't like that we weren't that band who went on tour and which because we didn't friends, No, not at all, you know, But I know it's from the label and everyone around it and the London music scene at the time, and which already had me marked down as a villain already for walking out on a successful band, which I'm also very proud of, and this was like another another big, big black mark to stick
next to me, to say he's a he's a wrong.
And he's trouble.
And I'm really proud of the fact that I was trouble at the time, and because I think I made good, brave decisions. And if I was to say to young people who were who are who want to be successful, don't make those decisions. But if I say to you, if I make young people who want to have an adventurous creative life. Apps if you if you don't do stuff like that, you will never really discover what's underneath.
And I have, and I've gone on to have great creative adventures because I took those big made those big moves when I was young, and took the ship for it really and didn't just sit around in a band for one hundred years and just and have an easy ride, you know, have everyone pick me up, take me to a gig, play the same songs, go home, you know, all that sort of stuff. I was never interested in that. I've never done it. And I mean what I love
about yes, and that with David. I mean, by the way, David's one of my best friends, you know, and we have been for a very long time since then, so he's I love the guy, you know. And what we love about it is that song does still exist in a vacuum. It exists in a place where people will say, God, I didn't know that was you, or I just love that song. They don't love it because they saw as tore it, or because they've had our poster on the wall or anything. They just love it because it's it
makes them feel fantastic. You know, they don't really buy into the brand. You know, like you if you like Navan or if you like I don't know, Harry Styles or something. You buy into a brand, don't you that the song, the record, the album, the dance move, the video, you saw the concert, you know you followed it. You feel connected in that way to a brand that's more than the music. And that's a very there's nothing wrong with that. That happened to the Beatles and the Base,
heat Rollers and everyone. You know, that's what we do when we connect with pop. But with this, no one connected with any of that and never has done because it wasn't there. They only connected with the wax on you know, on the record, and that's all they had. And that was my ideal, that was my vision. I thought that was my you know, this ridiculous purist sort
of dream. When in Ireland when they had the referendum on gay marriage a number of years ago, at it was it was like kind of the anthem at the time. I remember going, we went there, David were there at the time, just after it, and we had no idea and it was yet it's called yes, and that it was all the yes vote, and that was such a powerful thing for us, obviously for David, you know, so, so yeah, I felt like I lost the battle and won the war.
Like growing up, were you similar in terms of, like you say, to walk away from a really successful group and then to have this huge song and to not run after that and to not try and capitalize on that as well, and to say no, I want to do something else. Is that something that's always been in you? Because it's it to me that always feels like a very rare trait.
I don't know where that comes from, a bit apart from maybe when I was growing up, I never thought to make music for a living, you know, I thought it would be a hobby. I never thought that it was possible. And what I did, and with the music that I listened to a lot of it was what you would now call the alternative at the time of the nineteen eighties, music that for me was just pop music.
It wasn't you know.
I listened to some some out there stuff, but generally the stuff I was listened to was was what I regarded as just exhilarating, beautiful pop music. And but the but was shunned by the mainstream generally at the time, it's easy to forget that groups like the Smiths and New Order and all those groups who are now elevated into legend, you know, Oh, they were always great. No, no, no,
they weren't. They weren't played on the radio. They played the biggest show the Smith's ever played in London's Bricks and Academy and now it's the last show. Yeah, And they played that several a couple of times, and I was at that show. But you could see somebody playing Bricks and Academy tonight and you've never heard of them, you know, And so people will elevate the status. So that music at the time for me was really beautiful and it was it was what should be what we
should all be listening to, but it wasn't. And so those a lot those characters were quite centric and took break brave moves and lived in a place where they didn't need to worry about the mainstream because it didn't really it didn't really accept them. And so I had a lot of influence of characters there, yeah, who shunned mainstream media, and and that was what part of what attracted to me.
You know.
New Order famously wouldn't do interviews and did things very differently. If they did Top the Pops, they had to play live famously made yeah, quite obtuse decisions in what they did. New Order would leave their sequences when computer sequences music was very in its infancy, they'd leave it running and walk off the stage. Was the music played on by machines just just to wind people up and say, oh, they can't really play, you know, and which is largely true.
And so yeah, I was really attracted to people like that. Yeah, I thought it was funny and I thought it was cool, and that was part but that was part of my standard growing up. And I had good people around I've had good people around me. You know. My partner, my wife, has been around with me forever and she just has no real interest in the music industry. She just somebody likes records and Friday Night like like lots of us,
do you know. So if she sees anything, she just says, well, term to fuck off, and.
She's always done that. My wife's similar to that. Cool.
Well, let's actually right, right, Okay, Well you know what that we know the battles that the stakes are higher in in outside of the world of where we live, you know, and so yeah, and I and that's always been and I think there's so many yes people in around media and entertainment and stuff that people who just do a bit more flippant are more realistic about stuff. So I don't know, I never thought, you know, again, I'm not I don't want to make a thing because
I don't think I'm that that outrageous of anything. You know, I really like talking to I'm really I'm really happy that to talk about things like this and what I've done in my career is a nice thing to be in. It suggests that people have heard it and enjoyed it, and that's what's what's to not like about that, you know, And that's nice. So I don't ever think it's been maybe where I am now, it's now it's kind of accepted.
I feel like I'm kind of accepted now. And it's taken thirty years to get that through that people aren't now putting a black market on me and saying he's a wrong and actually saying, actually this that's quite good. You know, that's quite cool as it turns out. But it was it's been hard work, yeah, arrived, well, you know, just well, I've survived.
And I mean I've always got the impression you are the least nostalgic person. Is that fair to say?
Yeah, I'm not very nostalgia. I mean I might be nostalgic about TV I watch or something like that, you know, like any of us, but I'm not. I mean again, I don't think it's that obtuse. So I think it's important to encourage people to fresh, refresh all the time, into channel, just keep moving. I think as an artistic person, you have to keep moving. That's the whole point. You
have to keep it. And then the analogy is always that we're we're constantly our skin cells are constantly dying and constantly being born, and every that means every part of our body and our existence is traveling in time and moving and regenerating all the time. And therefore, as an artist in any way, you've got to you've got
to go with that. And the minute you stop and just sit back on your greatest hits and going on about the good old days, it's just it's it just puts you in inertia, you know, it's it's it stamps you in a place. And again, that is very difficult people love nostalgia. People want to talk to me about the good old days, and they don't. They just want to hear that, you know, and I understand it. But it doesn't mean I'm going to give in and do
it just to please other people. You know. It's because, like I said today, but today, I've been up recording violin all day for a record. Last night, I was doing a TV show with a record that's just about to come out. It goes on and on from there. Everything about that is even the thing I was doing today is completely different from what I was doing last night, and that's something coming out next year, and it goes on and on. That's what makes me, you know, it's
my life. Yeah, that's what I do. I feel like people. I feel like, at the end of the day, that's what people should want me to do, right. You know, if I said, oh, what if you're only new records and no I just sit and listen to the old ones.
You know, yeah, no, I know exactly what you mean.
No one's going to like that. So I think, well, okay, well, you know it's.
Got an image if you just sat there listening to those first two swed down and doing nothing else not leaving the house. I don't listen to any of my records, do you not know? As soon as they're done, they're done and done and that's it. So how did the new record with Jesse Buckley come together? I mean, first of all, how did you how did you meet her? Well, Jesse was introduced by somebody who was looking after her and trying to find opportunities of her in music that
she might like. And she didn't really want to go off and become an R and B star or pop star writing lots of pop hits or anything like that.
I don't you know. She's a beautiful, wandering, adventurous soul and.
From that she.
Didn't really I don't think she could write down what she wanted to do. But everyone knows she's extraordinarily talented in every area, and so when it came to singing, it's about finding somewhere or someone and she could who could help bring something to life, you know. So we were introduced by a guy called Paul Sminiki and Jesse just I was I got Jesse's numb and said I'll give her a call, and I phoned her and she
was on FaceTime and she was outdoors. She was walking and it was windy, and she was up clearly upper mountain or something, and I said, I said where are in? I'm upper mountain. I said, right, okay, great, So where's the mountain?
Said?
Oh, it's an island and I said, right, okay, lovely, Well I imagine that because I know you're Irish. Jesse, come on, where an island? Said oh, you wouldn't know. It's the west of Ireland, place called Kerry. And I said, I know Kerry. Yeah, I know Kerry and said you do and I said, I said yeah, where where are you? And carry and said I'm in Killarney. You wouldn't know it. And I said, I know Callaney as well, and I do know Kerry. And we just started talking about that
area of island. I basically when we were my parents were Irish and when we were kids we used to go and stay down there and carry in an island called Valentia Island, which is just magical. We just started talking like that. We're just That's always how it's been
with me and Jesse. We just talk about stuff. Eventually she came up to London and during one of the lockdowns, had we just sat in my kitchen and wrote a song and that was it and we off we went and she said, when we finished writing the song, we recorded it on our phones, just just a very simple version, just a strum, guitar and her singing, no microphone, was no studio, and then I just thought I left it. And then she she said, do you want to do
that again? And I was like, yeah, let's do that again. And that kept happening, and it happened for thirteen weeks and we wrote thirteen songs and yeah, so that's that's how that's how it happened with Jesse.
And an Eventure.
I mean, that is that is the that becomes the album for all our Days That Tear the Heart. I mean, her voice is incredible, Like it's she's got such an amazing voice. I'm guessing, like does that make it easier?
I mean I'm not expecting to say, oh, yeah, I've worked with have.
Some terrible singers in the past, But when the person you're working with has that in them, does it Does it make it easier?
And also do you have a sort of when you work with somebody like would it have been enough for her voice to be incredible but for there to have not been some sort of connection between you.
When you meet a great voice, you don't meet somebody who could do vocal gymnastics. You meet somebody who you connect with, and you connect with the voice, you connect with the person. It's as simple as that. So you know when we talk of the great voice, and you watched one of those, you know, the dreadful programs about voices, and you know, it's all about the scales and how perfectly you're in tune and all that kind of stuff, and I just I'm not interested in anything like that.
Really.
Jesse is technically incredible with her voice anyway, which as a starting point is pretty great. Yeah, it's it's like it's something that you just don't Yeah, you don't consider. But what you when you connect with somebody, you connect with the tone, You connect with the delivery and obviously the way they want to use words and and and you connect that. For me, what I connect with is is the personality and the soul of somebody.
At what point then does it go from maybe feeling like it's Jesse Buckley solo album and becomes a joint venture with with.
Yeah, I mean it was it was for me. It was always was just Jesse's record, and she asked that I get I do it.
Was have my name on it as well.
I think I think partly she just wanted didn't want the whole thing on her, and partly because we just became really close and a partnership with a vision that went beyond just here's here's a couple of tunes.
It's a it's a really beautiful record, and it's so kind of grand in places and so kind of intimate in others. Was there thinking back to like that Mcarman and Butler record for example? You knew what you wanted that project to be, and it very much wanted to be a particular a thing. And you know, as we've spoken about, did you have is there an aim for this record?
Well, I mean they're not that far off. They're not that dissimilar in that sort of quite idealistic vision and approach and a very purest approach to making it. I mean, obviously David's was that, Yes, was very much about it being a pop moment, and that was you know, very clear we wanted it to be that kind of pop record.
This I don't want to put any We don't put any kind of musical genre on it, but we it's very much about It's about a distillation of where we were at that moment, and each moment that we wrote a song being able to describe that moment, and they were strange times we were living through. We all lived through, yeah, trying to express jointly how we came together. It's an interesting thing when you write, you don't you don't. You know when people, perhaps in your magazine you might have said,
what did you write that song about? What's that song about? My favorite song? What's that about? And they'll tell you, and I always say, no, no, it's not, because you're just you're It's very easy to do it, to assume that definition or that narrative after the event. But at the time, I don't think it's important for a song to be about something. I think it's what it should be about, is about pulling the feelings in a way that other people have the possibility to keep interpreting. That's
what a really great song is for me. Wichitar line man, who the hell is wichitar line man? What the hell is that? The line man for the county? Who really knows what the lineman for the county? But we all adore that song, you know, and it means it has such feeling and potency and it has beautiful individe your lines in that within that song that just kill me. But why it's about this guy putting the lines up the telegraph lines?
I think it is or something.
Yeah, I think it is that that's not important, you know. So it's about it putting these individual images and throwing images at people that you can absorb into your life and your your experience and interpret the way you want to.
And I think that's that's what the goal was for this.
Are there songs that with that in mind? Are there songs out there that you love.
That you are desperate to know what they're about? Yeah?
I think about I'm not really desperate, if I'm honest, And maybe that's because of I'm in that experience myself a lot of the time. Yeah, I often think about what is that about? What's going on there?
And I trying to.
Switch it off? Yeah, I often just switch it off. I don't really I don't really care something's about. Yeah, I was thinking about this slat. There's this beautiful song called Midair by Paul Buchanan. Paul Buchanan was in the Blue Nile and it's one of my favorite ever songs. And I was asked to choose this as a song I loved recently and I and it made me think. And I can be asked what the song is about because I love it so much, and again, I love
certain lines in it. I don't really know. I couldn't tell you what it's about the whole thing, and you have no desire to know. But I wouldn't fred no, and I wouldn't ask the artist or anything like that. I don't really have that desire no to do that. Yeah, and often with artists who I could ask those questions and I don't want to go on it. I don't want to go there with them. Yeah, I do tend to. I tend to never ask an artist what a song's about it, but I do tend to. I'm kind of
suppressing what I really want to ask. I do always want to know.
But because I know that they obviously a lot of time they don't want to talk about that, which I completely understand as well as.
Also because that's given you the opportunity to keep it circling your brain, which keeps it fresh. Yeah, if they just said, oh, it's about that bloke you know, or somebody famous or something you'd just be you'd probably be like.
Oh, yeah, yeah, I've got a friend called I've got a friend called Swan. His name is his name is Wayne. I met him at University's first person. I'm at university and I and I introduced myself and he said, oh, my name is Wayne, but everyone calls me Swan. And to this day, I don't know why he's called Swan. I've never known, but it's got It got to a point where he said, look, if I tell you why, it's never going to be as good as what you've got in your mind.
Like it's going to be.
It's just going to be how someone's misheard me and thought I said Swan instead of Wayne. It's going to be something so unremarkable. So yeah, it's a great mystery in my life. Though, if Swan you are, if you are listening, I still do want to know. I'm thinking as well.
Swan. I thought I had it.
At one point I text him in the middle of the night because I thought I'd worked it, and it turns out I hadn't. With Jesse, you did play you played one, you played a show, didn't you at the We did at the Green Now, how how was it? It's a very small venue. It's the one on Parkway. Yes, great tiny venue, amazing place. Until that point, when was the last time you had played like a show when you played in a show?
Me? I mean, I played quite a few shows in the last year on my own, and I'm working towards my own solo project again, and I have been doing that for the last year or so, so I've done quite a few shows my own. I think my last show i've ALWASO got a project, a project that hite that name, but it is a kind of a thing with Norman Blake from Teenage Fan Club and James Grant, who was in the group called Love and Money, two Scottish singers. We were put together for the Celtic Connections festival.
Somebody said, do you want to come and do it like a Roalm circle with these two guys for the night. And I know Norman already and I love his song. I mean, I'm the biggest Teenage fang Club song a fan, so I jumped at it and I said, yeah, sure, let's do that.
And we did it one night. It's sold out.
We did another night, and then we went and did another night, and then the three of us said, you know what, we've We're in this now. We should we should keep doing this because it's a lot of fun, and it is a lot of fun, and it's a really really lovely night. You get to it's literally three of us sitting and I sing a song, Norman sings a song, James sings a song, and we all play on each other's songs and it goes round like that.
It's brilliant fun because you look down the set list and you're just thinking, there's some great songs here and they're not mine that I can't wait to play everything flows it's going to be brilliant because I love that song and I'm like, wow, here I am with Norman. Are you happiest when you're collaborating. I find doing my own thing very very rewarding in a different way, but it's it has an extra intensity that can put me into a dark place, just like of anything you do.
You know, if you have anything that any of us do, if it's if it's very solo and intense, you know you need to break out of that every now and then. I honestly I like all of the things I do.
I'm really I like.
I love the fact that I have the opportunity to go in every.
Direction because you're not. You're someone that strikes me as collaborating. Is what I always think of when I think a burner butler, because you know, you've done so many different projects and produce so many people, but you obviously really know kind of what you what you want, and you kind of you know, you make big calls and as we've already spoken about, would you call yourself you can't be a control freak?
Or are you?
I mean, I just don't believe in that term, right, you know, I just don't believe in it. I love people who have vision and who can artake what they want, and I love watching I tend whenever I meet people like that, particularly in my field. They're people who who are good at delegating and bringing people in. They're the people who are great at bringing you in and making
you feel involved and finding your place. I mean, the nasty side of a control freak is somebody that actually wants to be on their own and just keeps everybody out, and so that that's not a collaborator at all. So collaboration is all about bringing making people feel making making people find a place that where they are at their best, where they understand the vision and they can enjoy the vision as much as you and express it, express what you need to do. So no, I don't, I don't.
I mean, yeah, I've got a strong vision and strong opinion of what I do, But I don't think that's It's like not in a nasty thing. You're not going around whipping people, you know, It's it's all with a hug at the end of it.
The best, the best thing it.
Ever is that when you say, oh, you're really known as a collaborator, but you know, actually with the biggest struggle, of course, is that I'm known for being in one group twenty eight years ago. But actually for you to say that to me, it's just the hugest thing, because it's the polar opposite of just being in a group and doing nothing else. So and actually might for me. My story is all as you say, it's all about having gone through a million adventures with a million people,
and that's what I love. Mean, I love being around people. On stage last night, I had fourteen people choir strings, all sorts of people, and it was just such a joy, you know, because it is me bringing people together, or you know, it's kind of is my job to pick musicians and find them and put them together and give them a explain the vision you know that I need.
But it's also my job to make sure that they're loving it, because that we're all having fun together, you know that, because that is that comes across.
Is there anything we've missed?
Well, what could you possibly have missed about me?
Yeah?
My, my, my absolute torture of having to go through Arsenal as a as a Arsenal fan.
Quite currently. It was night.
It was a very bad night, but you know what, I was doing a live TV show and knowing that I was going to miss Arsenal, and I just had to I wrote it off and just turn my phone off and it was fine. And when I finished at the end of the night and found out what happened, the first thing I thought is, how can it be easier for me to play music quite intense, you know, quite demanding music live on TV? How can that be easier and more comfortable than watching a football match? And
yet I would do it over and over again. Yeah, So I mean that's I'm yes, that's that's my torture, my happy torture.
I'm an evident fan. Oh.
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