Loud and Quiet presents Midnight Chats.
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Midnight Chats. You're going to have to take my word for this because it's not really picking up on the microphone. But it's a very exciting time in my neighborhood this evening. It's the fifth of November when I'm recording this, and my neighborhood goes big on the fireworks. It seems it sounds incredible
out there. I mean, kind of annoying, but it's very loud and exciting, and I thought I would purposefully record this intro tonight so you could get some good atmosphere and ambiance to kind of lift this intro into something else, something more, And it's failed. Do you remember last two weeks ago when I was last here, I tried to inject some energy into these into my intro that failed as well. So the energy didn't work and the fireworks they've not
turned out the way i'd like them too. But welcome to Midnight Chats, Episode sixty. I think we're on now. I should check this on my phone. I'm pretty sure it's sixty. I should have done this before. Yes, it's sixty. Fifty nine was last week with Bobby Gillespie. Greg did that and it's a great one. I know every week we say, hey, listen to last week's one. It was really good. But Bobby Gillespie, you know, the guy always makes for good interviews. So do check that if you
haven't listened to that. This week's podcast is with Baxter Jury and the ambience thing that I was going for, or the ambiance of the fireworks does tie in to this podcast. I recorded this with Baxter at his home in the summer, in the middle of the heat wave when it was like thirty two degrees and we were at his flat which used to be his father's flat, Ian Jury of the Blockheads, and it's right on the River Thames, and it's got this beautiful view and this
lovely balcony. It's next to the bridge. It's down in Hammersmith. There's some fireworks. You must be able to hear that. Exciting stuff, right, exciting stuff. Anyway, we recorded this because we were it was a really hot day and he's
got this incredible view from his balcony. We thought it would be a really great idea to record it sat out on his balcony and we'd get some nice kind of atmospheric background sound of them and the water and the birds, and we did get that, but we also got the sound of the bridge, and the bridge makes a fuck load of noise. It's got these rivets in it. You're gonna hear this in a minute when we get
to the interview. But I can't work out if it was a good idea now, because one I felt like I got very sunburnt because we were sat in direct sunlight and the noise is actually kind of distracting. Baxter, thankfully, is an entertaining guy, with or without background noise. I met him last year. We did a feature in the magazine with him. We do these features called My Place, where we shoot an artist at their home and we photograph all of the things that they've got in their
house and they talk about those. And I went to Baxter. He was in a different place at that point. He was in like a stopgap place. You can read that if you are interested. It's very funny. Baxter is a very funny man. And that's on Loud and Quiet dot com if you want to phish that out and have a read of that. But now, as I say, Baxter has moved into what is essentially the apartment building that
he grew up in in his formative teenage years. Quite a wild place when his father was, you know, riding high with his band and by the sound of it, causing all kinds of chaos in this incredible mansion block on the Thames. So yeah, it was nice to see Baxter again. I've seen him once or twice in between, seen a couple of his shows, which are always really good. But he's got a new project at the moment called Bed or Beed. It's a collaborative thing. It's not just him.
It is Baxter. That's the b The E is ettiend Creasy, who is also Super Discount. He's that guy, the French DJ and electronic producer, and also Delia Holiday from Skinny Girl Diet. They're not necessarily calling it a band. I don't think they really know what they're calling it. But it's self titled. It's called Bed and that's out now on the Heavenly Label. For now, though, I'm going to leave you with myself, Baxter Jury and an extremely noisy bridge.
If you do like the podcast, please comment or like it and subscribe, and in the meantime go and hunt down a copy of this month's issue of Loud and Quiet. It's got Jimify Lacoste on the cover as well as the Beastie Boys inside Rattle Samass. Loads of great new music in there, pigs pigs, pigs, pigs, pigs, pigs, pigs, and lots of great stuff, so please do check that out. Here is myself and Baxter. Thank you for listening to Midnight Chats. Are we going to have one more firework
before we go? No, it's back, so we can probably start by explaining what the background noise is here where we are.
Well, I've just read take I've taken possession of my old family home. Really, I now rent it off the rest of the family, and I haven't been here for that twenty five years, thirty years, and the last four months Cosmo and I, my son and I have moved back in and it's pretty splendid. I always knew it was splendid, but it wasn't so splendid in the late
mid eighties. It was more of an experimental place to live, as opposed, but the conditions within the house were harsh into the way Dad had it, which let down a little bit how beautiful the actual Yeah, you know, it's a bit more the way Dad wanted to live in his special way. Sure it was a bit crackered, but so to come back here and suddenly appreciate it, especially on a day like this.
Well it's about its late it's late twenty degrees. We are directly on the River Thames. And the sound that people can probably hear in the background are the cars crossing. That's Hammersmith Bridge, isn't it right?
You don't want to get a fanatic fan. I quite like it. I did. I'm not wow, fanatic fan.
Come down here?
Yeah, totally.
It's the cars of a nearby bridge.
Yeah. No, we are we overlooking Hamison Bridge, which is an amazing bridge. It's an amazing part of and it's kind of not like it. You know, Hammersmith just stayed Hammersmith in the since it hasn't gone through some sort of trend revolution or anything like. That's quite an anonymous area.
There's lots of posh energy on these people rowing and jogging. Yeah, there's a normal you know community in Hammersmith's quite tough old area and you get a good parallel community which we were just taking the piss out of people saying that, yeah, yeah, yeah, parallel community really barns over there, and that's beyond kind of beyond. You can't imagine how like sort of steel and flustered people are there. It's incredible. It's like Disney yeah.
Road if you go if you go straight over the bridge and down that road, it's those huge houses.
Barns common. It's just a bad conspiracy of rich.
You were just saying that that you still see posh people jumping off the bridge like pissed.
Yeah, tough for it. Yeah, you get people kind of you know, the pubs here and they leap off thinking it's the right thing to do, but that the river's perilous. It's just it's a it's a it's been just I think it's got a big trench in the middle of it, which encourages these kind of really strong currents that you're
obviously invisible. So but you think it's all inviting and still yeah, and you jump in, then it swallows you up in a second, or it takes you and they're actually you know, you've got imagine you're going to go on.
And it's really very dangerous and most of those people are just it's bravado. They're not jumping off to necessary, they're not trying to kill themselves.
They've junk something and their point of reference has gone missing, and they're very very confident for that twenty two minutes of alcohol levels or something and they jump off a bridge. Yeah, they're posh. Nothing else to explain it.
The sound of the bridge and the cars going over, because this bridge actually makes more noise than most normal bridges because it's it's like, I don't want to say it's a handmade bridge, but it's got these rivets.
On it's well, I think I don't know what it's about it, nothing about the rivets. But what I do historically know about the bridge is a pre it's a pre Victorian bridge possibly, whereas I don't know. There's death definitely true, but it was design when cars were made. So they regulate the cars and in fact they close it every eight years for a couple of years to re strengthen on the suspension on it because it's not zion. But if you do notice, they regulate the buses so
only one bus has allowed it across it. Oh really, and then a massive kind of like a big boat smash. It might have been a nuclear submarine or something really dramatic smashed into it once and really messed it up. And also they tried to blow up the IRA Bluet tried to blow up maybe in the late eighties or early nineties, and that really affected it. So now it's very sensitive and they're.
Quite a therapeutic sound.
I don't know about the you know, modern awareness of pollution and particulates. I don't know how good actually healthy it is living here, do you know what I mean? Yeah, it's quite quite like a brutal place there because it's so hot living here, and there's a lot of noise in people and you were like living on a film set. They're very exposed unless you close those very heavy velvet curtains. Everyone can see everything you do. Sure, and you grew
up here was this between here mum and dad. My mum lived in a normal place, not far away, but so where this is where dad lived here?
And that from being a baby like you remember this.
You know, from about eight nine or ten or something like that. Sure, and it was quite chaotic then, yeah, yeah, yeah, what is that when he bought it, he bought it, I think so early eighties or mid eighties or something like that. I don't really can't remember. I just sort
of blur it out a little bit. It was just, you know, I lived in between mum and dads and this is where this was his domain, and it was usually, you know, my bedroom was quite a lot of the time somebody else's bedroom, because you're just giving it to somebody else. And you know, and there's a film that was made about it and all that shit. But there was a guy called the soul Fate Strangler that lived here and all. Yeah, all that stuff, but that's all been you know.
I saw that film the Sex and Drugs and rock and roll fild A.
Lot of that actually took place here, but they just transposed it to different locations to make it make more narrative sense in film world. It's a lot of blocks.
Actually, I saw it very recently. Actually, it was it was just on every week. I think someone's brought the rights to it. There they're getting their value for money.
It's yeah, well, you're in it a lot.
Obviously. I didn't really put to andy together that you would be in it that obviously the character of you would be in it. Was it weird? Were you involved in that?
Film a little bit. They were really nice to us or the people, and we were like, we did bond with the people that made it and they were all really nice people and Andy Cirkus and stuff, and yeah, they were really you know, we watched the process was very interesting and they rebuilt houses that we lived in as kids, and it was all pretty weird. Yeah, it was a pretty weird experience. I mean, you know, you
can I can't imagine anyone that has anything. Anyone attempting to create a detailed, accurate representation of somebody's real life. You're always going to have it's always going to be disappointing. So we're the worst people to ask. Yeah, yeah, you
know what I mean. So I think it's not fair for me to say, oh, it's not It wasn't right because they were making you know, you've got to you have a narrative vista or something that you have to attempt to put a certain amount of entertaining information across in a package. And that's what it is, and that's a really difficult thing to do. So you have to take that, you know, the extreme and entertaining, entertaining moments
of people's lives squash it. Together and go make it into some sort of fantasy tale.
Yeah, And ultimately then the end result is that anyone that watches the film then thinks that it.
Was like that all the time, Like well, you know, and in los of ways, it's kind of a soft version as well, because the real details of a life like that are quite hard to portray, you know, They're hard to kind of get across in a in a filmic way.
So yeah, but did they film any of it?
They didn't have access and they didn't even use this as a location, but a lot of the events to you know what, a lot of stuff happened here. Yeah.
Have you ever thought about going into film that world? Just generally?
I did a little bit as I was a kid, because it was a thing, you know. But yeah, I mean I always thinking I really like it as a As a I really always dream that I'm going to write one of my stories into a story and have enough patience to write something down and then turn it into some form of short film and then someone's going to love that and turn it into a massive one. And I think that might happen, but it's you know, I'm still thinking about it. I think about it so
much without actually ever doing anything about it. So yeah, I hope. So I really liked film, I know a lot. But I even went to film school in New York. Did you what what year was that? In late nineties or something.
New York has still been a bit.
Yeah, it was just changing. Did Mayor Gilliazaviana whatever his name was, came in and it was just kicking ass and he was evicting all the bad people. But it was said, I was a right up lived up on ninety fourth Street, and it was still relatively heavy, especially someone like me with a nervous disposition. I thought it was heavy, but it was. It was great. Yeah, and we it was a course at NYU that was The
patrons were Spike Lee and Scorse. You never met them, but they'd structured this course and that was absolutely unbelievably amazing thing to do. And there were only two English people and everybody else was either from around Europe or mostly from different weird parts of America, all in this big melting pot. It was unbelievable. Yeah, four months of it we had we had the especially special filming dispensations where you can film anywhere and almost take over anywhere
based on someone's permission, and in New York. So we took over a church and we lived. We stayed down. You could stop, but you know, some way film there and we made these end of year films or end of course films.
So how long would you been, like eighteen or now?
I was about twenty three or four? Okay, So I was really serious about it after that.
Did you at that point did you think I'm going to be a filmmaker, I'm going to make films.
I sort of thought about it a lot. I mean, I think you know more than I do sometimes, So yeah, I thought about it. I should have ended up acting in all the films as opposed to making them. So it just became a kind of more of an actory type dude, yeah in it, you know. So maybe that was more of a transition to.
I studied film. It wasn't quite as glamorous as New York. I was in Uxbridge.
It was at the Beccons Film I know, it's different.
It was just at Brunell University, right, Okay?
Was it good?
Well? I realized very quickly I was in over my head.
Okay.
You know, as soon as I got there, I thought, oh shit, I don't think I like film the way these people like film. They were all talking about Japanese directors and you know they were they were hard. Yeah, exactly, they knew everything before we were told it. And I was like, oh god, okay.
Yeah, that they were deeply was a degree course.
It's a degree.
Yeah yeah yeah, but there's I mean, to do any kind of course like that over three or four years, you have to go so nuanced.
Yeah. I wasn't prepared. I wasn't prepared. I enjoyed it, but I just wasn't. I wasn't great at it. And I think my tastes aren't. My tastes are maybe a bit too mainstream.
Yeah, you like face Off?
I love face Off. I watched face Off recently.
That's always always Cosmos film is brilliant. Watched about eight minutes and you mean, dad, it's so poor and patronized modernly, it's so sexist, patronizing, irrelevant.
I went, all right, I mean he's completely right. But I mean when you watch face Off now, and that is another film. It's always on TV.
Yeah, the parallel out they go in tandem and sex and drugs all the time. There's one channel that just plays those those two.
I mean, it's so bad, isn't it? But my favorite John Travolta. I'm quite fascinated with John Travolta.
It's strange.
Dude's one hundred percent my favorite scientologist.
Who's he competing against?
Beck? There's Beck, there is Tom Cruise.
Any women are there?
Castially?
Actually, I.
Would struggle to tell you what she's been in. I think she was in Cheers? Was she in Cheers? You'd know if I showed you a picture. But no, there's not a huge mega style one. I don't think.
No, she's not.
But she's the type you can imagine, don't you think. But Travolta in Face Off is the film?
Right? Yeah?
And obviously Nicolas Cage another incredible performance from Really Weird. But you're right that that's kind of more. You know, I wasn't into the Andese stuff. What stuff are you into other than other than Face Off?
Well, I'm really particular, and I think I'm sort of know what which films are actually are good. I believe that I know the ones that are good, and they're non Zoti genre a pacific is that right term? But I you know, I just like good films, but they could span, they could go back years ago. You know, we grew up watching a lot of old school James Cagney for you know, all sorts of old gangster films and Bogue art films and then scores asies for you know,
anything good. It's rerealty difficult to make a good film. I mean, they don't make good films anymore because the page there's. People are too fragmented, aren't they, and budgetary pressures make people do things based on weird box office expectations stuff.
I saw the worst film I think I've ever seen, actually whilst I was on holiday last week.
Yeah, what was that?
It's a Marvel film. I'm not a big Marvel I'm not a big I'm not into it anyway, but when I do see one, if I think watch one, I do actually kind of big grudging. So actually it was quite fun. Yeah, I quite enjoy I think that's quite well done. There's a new one called ant Man and the Wasp.
I don't airplane.
You watched it, No, I was. I was at a drive in movie, yeah, and it was in the States, and it was about going to the movies in so we had to watch whatever was on and it was that. I mean it was atrocious.
It was appalling, really and they don't care anyway, right, so bad. How do you hear the film?
If you're sitting in your car, you tune in your radio to a frequency.
It depends on how good your radio is.
It does, yeah, and we're in a pretty good higher car so it sound was amazing.
Visual experience, yeah, was with like unsavory people having sex.
No, it's quite a fairly affair. It was like watching something at Somerset House or something. Okay, like it was quite picnicky and there were some really people who just go there. It must go there every week, and they had proper chairs and.
They did the whole experience and stuff.
So it was good. It was fun. But the shiptest film ever. I mean genuinely, I'm not surprised.
I mean I think they all are. I mean, I don't you know, I think the next great film might be my one.
You have? You have you started, right, I'm.
Thinking thinking, thinking about.
It, continued thinking about it.
I'm going to continue for another six months. I have started a little bit. But you know, I mustn't say that because that's the biggest, most pretentious I'm thinking about the next level failure that you could ever imagine. Start saying on your podcast about saying so you know, I'll tell you.
Okay, when we spoke last be the album was just about to come out. Is it near it? I guessing it's nearing the end of its touring life, and it's.
Yeah, I mean I think it needs to. I mean that sounds negative. I don't mean it needs to. You know, there's only a certain amount you need to do play one thing, and we played it a lot, and that's a really good sign. I hope that we were allowed to, you know, and we did a lot of gigs and we were nearing the end of the obvious cycle. It might have a little bit more life after that, let's see. But it's been good. I think it was a really
good experience. It's sort of hard to ask that question right at the end of it all, but yeah, kind of get me out of here. But it's been amazing. We've got all we've got left and nice gigs. We've got to do one on Friday or I don't know how this is. I can't say that come out because this is a fun this Friday would have passed. But yeah, anyway, we did one a few fridays, but Wilderness and we've got green Man and then we've got a few others
in November and one culminating in Shepherd's Bush Empire. So that'd be good. That'd be a nice tidy way of stoff.
Drawing a line. One. Have you been back to Paris Mont recently? You're going to Paris quite a bit back then.
No, not a lot. I'm just having a time living here and being on tour look after. No, not really, I did. I was there a little bit when I made that this album I made at one, but that was the last time I was there. I think I can't remember last time.
So this is a new I mean, there's a new album. I would call it an album, but is it a mini It's nine tracks.
It was just a group of stuff. We turned it into something.
Yeah, this is a new record that is coming out.
To them offering. You know, it's an in between thing and it's a collaboration. So in itself I find quite tricky because you have to listen to the other person. Yeah, okay, you know, like we'll have we definitely have absolute opposite ways of thinking because he's very French and I'm pretty West London dude, and you know that's quite tricky. But who's a lovely bloke at And what was the question alcoholic?
I don't know if there was a question.
Yeah, I just went off from some.
That's so is the coreation got a name. It's between you and.
It's basically it was me and writing some songs. And then we got this other girl called the Lilah Holiday who's who's the lead singer, and a band called Skinny Girl Diet, who are kind of like a punk band London punk ban been around the circuit for a few years.
She's pretty tough, and so she came over for a weekend and so we decided not to really officially call it a name, and Jeff from Heavenly just suggested, because it's b Backster and Delilah, that would call it Bed Yeah, which I thought was a suitably silly her everyone name, So that's what it's called Bed.
And how did you meet both Delilah and Etti? How do you know this?
And I did a track with a few years ago on Super Discount three, I guess, so I just went over there and did a track with him once and bonded and Delilah was introduced to us by our third party, somebody, just as we're looking for someone different, you know, that could sing. She had a personality singer, you know, not a kind of acrobatic singer. And she was perfect.
Yeah yeah, So where did you did you do it in?
He's got a little studio in Paris, you know.
And was it the three of you in a room putting it.
Together, and had done most of it already, and she came over, came over with her sister, Delilah, and he didn't really understand each other very well, right, they were. It's quite comical. It was a really weird trio. And she goes everywhere with her sister. She won't go anywhere without her sister. Okay, I mean she's only twenty one. Yeah, and yeah, it was funny. It was a really funny. It was a funny dynamic. He says things like do
you want to do you like to coffee? And then both Delilah and Ursa just look at him like what the fuck is he talking about? And I go coffee and they go, oh yeah, yeah, coffee. Yeah. Well, you know, it was a bit like that. It was a bit kind of.
Right, you're the man in the middle, Yeah, translating things. Did how did you find the collaborating? Do you think you mentioned that it's obviously it's kind of a different thing for you because you are a solo musician. But did you do you think you're a good collaborator? Did you find it?
Oh? I am of it all, just sort of. I just have one trick and then was allowed. As long as I'm allowed to use my one trick, Okay, then it's fine. But if it if it diversifies or I'm challenged, I get confused. I'm not I can't really do it anymore so, and I'm quite controlling over the little bit thing I can do well. Right, So ands about the most gentle, understanding guys. I think he probably made this all happen more than I did, probably without me knowing it.
Yeah.
He probably went breathed in and walked away at the right moment and went okay, it's all right. You know, I think I don't know that. I have a suspicion that might be true.
Okay, I'm jumping forward a head now because you're you're obviously going to make more backs to jury records on your own, But what is the immediate plan for this release, like, are you after you have one at all?
I mean, it's what they call a soft release.
Is that what they call it.
I don't know. They don't put it on record. They put it out digitally, okay, and then you and you react to respond, you know, you respond to the reaction. See what happened. I think it's it's a thing. It's a thing that you don't over schedule or over make a big issue out of and see what happens. It's actually, I would say, and this sounds negative, but accidentally it's really good. Yeah, I wouldn't realized the record. Yeah, yeah, it's good.
Yeah, it was.
That was such a great It's a little moment that because it was unthought about, I think captures a sort of sequence of events, quite personal and then and it actually does that quite well.
It's really notice it's got a more electronic film than work vibe.
Yeah, yeah, eighties mute records sort of vibe. Yeah. It's nice with a sort of depressive Mockney Dolphin character talking about himself, which I think is probably the same character that features an all my records. But I'm saying it's this cartoon Cockney Dolphin O. But sorry for himself.
It's quite fun though, to into that different world.
I guess it's good to be busy and it's good to do something different, and then it's good to actually try and do something that you're not over obsessed by
and oversensitive about, because that's quite brutal. I tend to do things quite emotionally, so I will kind of carry myself along with the ride on my own records, the ups and the downs, which is traditionally the thing not to do is try and take a sort of middle stance in music, because it's too erratic the outcomes and the random variables that affect records or whether you get nominated or you don't get nominated, this happens when you
sell there, you don't sell up or whatever. The thing is is to take a very rational middle ground, which I don't, but with this I might be able to, you know what I mean, sort of step back and it's a bit more of a neutral thing.
Do you think it also helps because there's someone else.
In well exactly, it's a collaborative thing, so it's not just me. Yeah, and it helps because somebody else is there as a support. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, So with that in mind, because Prince of Tears was an emotional record.
I imagine you must have been asked when you were doing interviews for that record, and you're probably still being asked about it, like, oh, how are you feeling and like about.
Emotions and yeah, totally yeah, I think so I was asked the other day about that, and now that's part. I think it's one of the reasons why it's quite nice to tie it up. Yeah, because it really accounts for a really dark period and it was really therapeutic writing about it. But it did stay with you.
As a result, Yeah, because.
It really said now I'm kind of thinking I'm not that person, and I'm in my river pad and I'm much more pretentious and less I'm much more shadow than I was like a year ago, when I was much nicer and real tears real, and now I'm much more shallow. Yeah, and become one of the characters I was moaning about in that record. Yeah, and I don't relate to anymore.
Yeah, And people keep saying to you backs, so you feel okay, because so now your record was about a breakup and that was ages ago.
And I've got just pure lizard alarm illuminat emotions that I don't have them. I'm like, I'm a lizard. Fuck off.
Have you been in bands before before you started working solo, like when you were a kid and stuff. Did you ever form a band?
Yeah? I mean here, you know my mates people I still write with now. We were there was our big music room here and stuff, and yet we played a lot, but not really thought, never played gigs or anything like that. I was quite a late bloomer. I was at film score pages. I really did take it seriously till I was about twenty seven or eight. I was. I was
a first ad as well. I did lots of pop videos and all that stuff, and did you I really thought about my I just never got my shit together to actually do it myself, because that was the only thing I would have been good at. I was never a very a good component within the team. I would have only been good if I was allowed to be creative. But that is such a leap. You have to just go and do it and be really cocky, don't you. Yeah, And I didn't realize that at the time.
Right, What pop videos would you have worked on? That I might know?
But those I tell the one that ended my career. Was a bank called Shampoo. Do you remember Shadow, Yeah, trouble these two It might have been that tune. I can't remember. And I was the first idea, was about the tenth time had become a first idea, which is quite a big deal because you were in charge of everybody. I think I was pretty young, actually I got twenty
two or three, and they just fucked me up. They just were so defiant on so many drugs and their misbehavior or like, and they were unwilling to do anything they were told and that affected them. The tears of people and all the you know, because it's quite a kind of hierarchical group of people, and then all the sparks and all that started getting upset because they didn't have a lunch back, and then the whole fucking place conspired again. It was the worst day of my entire life.
And they were all these like electricians and stuff or calling me Bertie Smalls from the riggings and that there's you know, there's big thing with emotion control and lots of crew. And I didn't know who Bertie Smalls was, and I somehow found out that he was a supergrass in the early eighties that got killed in his cell or something, and they were all calling me. But it was a really complicated set circumstances. But I never ever did it again.
That was a point out of this for me. My acoustic change started changing the world for the music.
Yeah, I slowly avenged them. Yeah, very, very very Your film could be about, Yeah, it could be.
Have you got an idea for the film already though? Yeah?
I think so. Okay, see all right, I won't chip him with the ideas. I'm sure you've got that covered. It was a good idea.
I didn't realize. I didn't know you. He worked on pop videos and stuff. It feels like it sounds like such a nice job, doesn't It sounds like such like I mean, maybe not so much next. Things have changed so much and most music videos are made on an iPhone, but the idea of.
Making music videos antiquated. It's like steam Era, who makes a fucking do.
You still make? You still make video?
Made a few for this.
Yeah, when you're on a on a set, I imagine it's a lot more than the days of the nineties when massively there was just like.
I'm quite bossy though still about doing I get quite involved. Yeah, I worked this an amazing guy called Roger Sergeant.
Oh yeah, it's brilliant.
Yeah, so me and Roger are quite he's quite hot, fixed skinned as well.
So yeah, we.
Made a couple of really good ones. Actually for this one. He's brilliant. He's an amazing guy.
Could you just tell the story before we start recording about the sign that your dad thought about putting up here?
All right, because right opposite where we are, we've got it's very I mean, a really old set of stairs that go into my old working stairs that go steps that go into the river that have no obvious purpose. But I think if you live here long enough a lot the river draws a lot of kind of emotional people in an emotional states of mind. They might come and contemplate the river. They might look a look it at it as a way of you know, ending things and stuff. And I think, you know, people must jump
in all the time. We must not. You don't hear about it? Yeah, but he said three or four times he'd seen people over ten or fifteen years at night just walk in and get whisked away. He'd seen it a shocking sight. But you see it right, and you definitely I mean living here as a kid. You see corpses and stuff. You see people get washed up anyway.
And he told me, because he's sitting here at night and write, he'd smoke a big spliff right and drink a beer and really contemplating, he was this brilliant idea of putting a button right next to where he sat, and he'd wait there on the third or fourth step, just before the water, just at that moment where they're deeply you know, there's still there's a there's still a margin of doubt about what they're about to commit to,
but they are still definitely on the way. You have to get them at the perfectly vulnerable moment, and you press the button and constructed on our balcony would have been this huge neon green sign that said, do not do this, have a cup of tea with me, or something so biblically encouraging that you it was so shocking a sight that you would switch out immediately out of your You might just have a little moment, a little
window where you got them out of there. Then they'd probably live here and it'll go wrong in another way.
You must have really fond memories of this place, having grown.
Up yeah, I do. Actually, yeah, it was great. You could never What you get with that type of bohemian existence is you learn so much and you and people are exposed to you that you I mean that sounds weird exposed to you, but culturally exposed to you in a way that is very wouldn't be manageable these days
wouldn't be acceptable, you know. So it was a kind of Bohemian bongo jam from eleven o'clock till three o'clock in the morning, and an estuary of the most weird, unsavory and brilliant people would turn up.
You know.
It was all sorts of people. Sometimes you'd get fifteen people standing in a circle, all shaking something and we would run out of bongos or moroccos. So someone would be shaking a complex packet and some trans of ust like shaking corn flakes with your face. And even at a young age, I think, fuck, you know, my house
is so weird. I mean it was. I once cup here when I was eleven, and this is a brilliant story, a ten or eleven, and there was a massive banging at the door and I answered, I was sleeping in the chaise lawns in the front room, and I answered the front door and there was a man with a hammer, and he was from upstairs with downstairs, but he ran the National Theater, I remember that run some important theater. And he had a hammer in his hand and I looked.
It must have been about three o'clock in the morning. And I went and he was just he was like shaking with rage. And I went away the noise, the noise, and I turned around and as I could adjust out of my street, but I had this mental noise coming from the end of the flat, going, O fucking hell. It sounds like a like a fuck of ships foghorn, you know, the whole like unbelievable noise. And I went, fuck hammer, Dad, and I could hear Dad laughing at
the end. And we went and I started to walk down towards where the noise was coming, and the man followed me, but I know aware that he was behind me with the hammer, and the Dad appeared in this sort of plume of cannabis smoke, smiling, laughing, and he looked at the man with the hammer and looked at me and beck to move out the way, and he sort of ushed at the man towards him. Then and sort of led him towards the bathroom at the end.
And as he opened the door of the bathroom, this light, this weird lava lampert set up sort of shone throughout the smoke, and there was like an Aboriginal man. He was actually the last of an Aboriginal tribe called Bartholomews his name was, and he was native. Was like he had a loincloth on, but his balls were hanging out in the middle of the bath and both his legs were on either side of the actual and he had
a massive diggerydo there's balls rubbing against this thing. And he was playing the didgeridoo in the in the only way that was known in the last circular motion of some tribe that had learned it three hundred years ago. And he turned up when I was asleep and they'd been playing it for two hours and driven the whole block. Man. This guy had gone crackers. What did the guy with the hammer join the hammer? And he moved out two
weeks later. That's all I remember, And I remember thinking, So it's like it's like there's a scene in Et which is a bit similar when the little kid sees the big when they put up all the the sort of the tents around his house. There's this amazing scene and have you seen ET.
Yeah, yeah, I've not seen it recently.
You know, when they find they find the anim they so they put these contamination.
To Yeah, and ET is in like a little kind of container thing, and.
There's there's a perspective from Elliott, the little boy, who's just looking thinking, oh my god, what's happening to my life? Yeah, what's happening? What's going on? This is beyond you know, I just remember seeing it from that perspective of the cannabis smoke and the lava lamp and the naked aboriginal.
I mean, it's pretty confusing when you're woken up unexpectedly anyway, just whatever happens. But to be face that is quite something, isn't Yeah.
I mean I was used to that. I was used to survival sleep or you know, I could adapt, But yeah, I mean, and so those memories are fantastic wherever you can't unnaturally repeat them. And I think it's a shame for Cosmo in a way that he has not going to experience some of those kind of exciting, wild, incredibly inspiring moments, but also those experiences can rob you from who you want to be as well. You know, it's
not your childhood is there to be built. You know, you're meant to be built so you can deal with the world. So sometimes so much excitement doesn't be very stable or something like that.
Yeah, yeah, would you have friends over and stuff back then?
Yeah, with thoroughfare?
Would they just all be like.
Yeah, yeah exactly, Yeah, you're completely all of them. Yeah, they were just a gang. We were a gang and dad's mind. I used to drive us around and his Nisan micro with a Kamakazi signed around the front, and yeah, we were we lived, we were pigs in ship basically an amazing time. Yeah, by the time of fourteen fifteen, this was the gang HQ and it was great. Yeah, we all smoked spliff and we all, you know, did what we wanted.
So when did you move? When did you move out of here or your dad move out of here? Or like, was it was your dad here to the end of his life?
No, no, no, he moved out here a long time ago. I can't remember when, mid nineties something like that. It's been a long time since anyone's been there. It's been rented out and paid. I've got two brothers, half brothers, and they went to a nice school and all that stuff, and this was this paid for all that right right? Great? Yeah, I was in and out all over the place. Yeah, I think I moved. I moved out of home really young. I was twenty one, twenty two.
And your dad one other things. We did a feature in the mag last year when the One came out, and one of the things that one of my favorite visit when you were saying how your dad became friends with Paul McCartney, or Paul McCartney came around your knocked on the door, isn't he when.
He came to visit dad when he was it wasn't very well. Yeah, I don't think it was totally unannounced, but I think you know, it was quite locale. Quite hey man made a cup of tea or something.
That's quite nice.
Quite because in fact, that Jav was over here yesterday and he just interviewed him at the Institute in Liverpool and spent two hours in and said he was amazing, said he was really, but he's quite like he's familiar, Yeah, in a way that he's not really, but he's trying to be is Jarvis Cocker a big fan of Paul McCartney. I think you'd be, I mean to the extent that I guess, Yeah, I mean definitely. I mean you'd like, you know, how old job. I mean, he's from that
generation everyone should be in a way. I mean, he's stupid not to be and you can get over his some escapades that disencourage people for a while, and you can see it clearly now. I mean he's amazing and it like it's amazing, Like what he did, it's so amazing it is, you know, yeah, even living let dies amazing.
It is.
He's amazing. Yeah, they can do what he wants forever. Yeah, that's how I feel about him. I always end up talking about him on the podcast to people. I don't know why it keeps coming back to him.
I'm just pretty sure some listeners, if you get annoyed of it by now, it always leads back to Paul McCartney.
Well, I think he was, because I think it all does lead back to Paul McCartney probably, And that's why it probably all really does lead back to him. If you're talking about music and British and all that. I mean, you know, and I think he's now that the right. He'll age well now and it will start to make sense.
He stopped dyeing his hair, which he does.
Doesn't think we should leave him alone, you know, I think you know, Cosmo's got really into music. He's only fifteen, but hees got into it. And so do you revisit that catalogue and all those records and he's buying them all and buying and you go, oh, Mike, and he's showing finding the YouTube footage of him playing Blackbird for the first time in Abbey Road, and you're like, I mean, it's just unbelievable. So he did what he wants.
Really, Yeah, are we allowed to mention about the track you made with We'll make him with Jovis yesterday or yeah?
I mean it's only it's future works. Yeah, it's just a new album. I just yeah, I did a thing with job where it's just an idea. He's so proactive. Jo I had an idea when we watched the football together in our dusty suits the other day about it's just about a telephone conversation. It's really art jazz nonsense
in a way. But he's it's just him having a telephone call and you can only hear one side of it, right, And I knew it'd be brilliant at it, and he said he acknowledged my idea and came around two weeks later, did it in one take and it's absolutely amazing. So we demoed it as an idea and he just utterly nailed it and it's it's kind of funny but actually quite sinister and brilliant.
So this will be for your next solo record, the record after this.
So yeah, I'm just gonna going into the studio in October started. I think we might go in with that with Paul Letworth for a while possibly, So I'm going to try out and see what happens. So yeah, we're just all. I just thought i'd get stuck in straight away, no point in. And I've written some. I've written some I think some really good tunes. Actually, yeah, you got good.
You've got I think I'm going to carry on with this. Have you got more than that? You've got the one that you've done with Jarvis.
Loads, I've got a bunch of Yeah, I've just been writing and then then here I'm just gonna sit there and write. So it's not hard. Yeah, it's perfect cool. I think we're done one. Thanks very much, that's good.
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