Forever seems a long time – back in touch with Nicky Weller

Posted on June 30, 2026 by writewyattuk
Launch Night: the latest impressive publication from Soul Deep

Landing on doormats across this land and further afield of late is a new publication from the team behind Soul Deep Publications… and typically large at that, not so easy to read in bed.

On the back of the same publisher’s coffee table format celebration of The Style Council comes a fully illustrated, 304-page limited edition hardback reappraising the first decade of Paul Weller’s solo career, from 1990 to 1999, my excuse to track down Paul’s sister Nicky, who along with avid fan Stuart Deabill and Steve Rowland (art direction, design and layout) put this mighty tome together.

Nicky was at home when we chatted, not long off the back of a London launch of In the Shadow of the Sun: Paul Weller & the Nineties at the iconic 100 Club, barely half a dozen stops along the Bakerloo line from her Maida Vale base, where she was having a little time to herself in the sunshine. And I realised that morning that this summer marks a decade since my first feature/interview with Nicky, on the back of meeting her at the About the Young Idea exhibition.

“Was that for the Liverpool one?”

Yes, at the Cunard Building. I loved that. And my subsequent phone chat – I was between holidays in Scotland and Wales with my girls, having come home to a lovely response from Gary Numan to an online interview – was barely two hours before another, my first, with legendary Dr Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson, one of Paul Weller’s key inspirations in the mid-Seventies. Not so shabby as working days go.

“That sounded like a bloody great week!”

In the same way that 2016 doesn’t seem 10 years ago, it’s odd to think Paul’s first solo single, ‘Into Tomorrow’ – the only one credited to the Paul Weller Movement – was released 35 years ago last month, in May 1991. But the period covered in the book goes back a little further, accounting for many key moments in Paul’s amazing solo career, from the days it all came together after he finally called time on The Style Council through to the build-up to the release of fifth solo LP, Heliocentric, by which time it was – as is so often the case with his career – all change again… another ‘Brand New Start’ in the offing.

Lifestyle Choice: Co-author Nicky Weller with the new Soul Deep publication

What an amazingly creative spell it was too, from first dipped toes in the water with the Movement on the road to the first self-titled album, the wondrous Wild Wood and Stanley Road, then next mighty offering Heavy Soul, in a period also including a 1998 greatest hits collection and various headline ventures, not least the War Child studio project and the Gig for Kosovo. All covered, and I put it to Nicky that the latest weighty product from the Soul Deep stable is everything you might expect from the makers – rather stylish, colourful…

‘Very heavy!’

Indeed, with rare or unseen photography and artwork, exclusive interviews, and packed with attitude. How did this work. Was Stuart Deabill the project driver?

“He was the kingpin really. It was his idea, he chatted with Steve Rowland, then they brought me in because of my archive, getting people to do interviews. A good little setup. It’s a lovely book and really well put together.”

Hark as us old folk, but this was a golden era… and yet we’re not talking the Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, or even the Eighties. We’re talking about the Nineties with a nostalgic air.

“Mental, innit! As with The Jam and The Style Council days, I’ve got everything related to the Paul Weller {solo} years, so it’s just a case of going back through all my boxes – reminding myself how much crap I keep!”

For me, those first three Weller solo LPs were a key part of the soundtrack of my life in that decade. And yet this was just the next golden era for Paul and his music. With the way The Style Council ended and the manner of the shelving of their Modernism LP, there were grounds for the music press to do a little Weller knocking. But Nicky’s not having any of that and argues in her foreword for the book that he never lost his touch.

“There’s something my husband said the other night, but I missed his question at the 100 Club – it was dark in there! People said Paul was washed up and blah blah blah, but when he left The Style Council, he had a young baby. We forget that – there were three years where he was just enjoying all that. Him and Mick {Talbot} both had kids, so it was a different ball game for a while.”

Three’s Company: Stuart Deabill, left, with co-authors Nicky Weller and Steve Rowland

We all have those periods in our lives, so why should Paul be any different? My diaries are pretty good, but there are times I can’t recall too well around then.

“I don’t remember a lot of the Nineties, to be honest with you!”

Was that down to a touch of this ‘modernism and hedonism’ Stuart was advocating on business cards at the time?

“I reckon it was! Then I went off and did my own thing with the Acid Jazz label, so some of it is a bit of a blur. That Heavy Soul era… I can’t remember a lot of that!”

Much is made of that period of reemergence and Paul’s creative assertion that his fire hadn’t gone out at all. It was all pretty life affirming where I was standing. As for the negativity about the previous lull between hits (there was a five-year gap between top 10 studio LPs for Paul), are you suggesting that was chiefly down to music media indifference? Part of their build ’em up, knock ‘em down, then build ’em up again policy?

“Absolutely. I think that’s dead right!   

Yet there’s always a new beginning with Paul, isn’t there… if you wait long enough.

“Yeah, absolutely! And a 30-year plus one at this one! It’s mad, really.”

For whatever reason, I drifted away from the Style Council story after the release of The Cost of Loving (I like it again now, as mentioned in my chat with Mick Talbot three years ago), but while my own personal circumstances – not least the best part of a year spent backpacking around the world – ruled out my chance to catch any of those landmark Paul Weller Movement shows, I was fired up by his return by the time I returned.

Looking back now, it’s tricky to get your head around it all, but this was the next Paul age crisis, our man moving into his thirties and seemingly grasping that need to feel relevant again. But it seems he’s always been that contradiction – that love of so much Sixties-related music, art, clothes and culture woven into his DNA alongside his perpetual need to move on.  

There’s an interesting review included in the book from Iestyn George, who I recall from that era’s London indie circuit. I think he was with the NME then. He talks about new life being breathed into old favourites in those live shows, like ‘Precious’ (funnily enough, dusted off and revamped again on Paul’s latest tour), ‘My Ever Changing Moods’, ‘Headstart for Happiness’, and so on. He ends his review with ‘A star is reborn.’ And that’s the buzz I was getting then, driving me back to all that… enough time having passed to see it all again with fresh eyes and ears.

Times were changing, and I was quick to snap up the Paul Weller Movement VHS, then that wonderful self-titled debut LP, another ‘Start!’ announced. I more or less wore out the three LPs that followed, the C90s I put together covering Paul Weller and Wild Wood taped from my vinyl, played a hell of a lot in the red Ford Fiesta my better half sold me and the Rover 216 Vitesse that followed, in the era I was working in the South-East while travelling back and forth, heading all over this country and further afield to be with my Lancashire-based beloved.

I finally caught him on top form close to his old patch and on my old one at Guildford Civic Hall in March 1994, an amazing night, travelling back down especially from Lancashire, barely a few weeks after moving north, no doubt having a wobble at that decision accordingly. As for next LP Stanley Road, that was the icing on the cake, another great record that made me feel homesick for my own roots.

In The Shadow of the Sun is dedicated to Stuart’s mum, Valerie Deabill, and Nicky and Paul’s mum, Ann Weller, both having passed away while the book was being put together. And Ann was well known among Jam, TSC and solo year aficionados and fans as one half of the partnership that proved to be the heartbeat behind Weller World, providing crucial support from early Seventies days on the pub and working men’s club days onwards, John – who passed away 16 years before his widow – managing his son’s career while Ann played an integral part in his story.

As Nicky put it in her foreword, Ann was ‘very independent… never really minding Dad being away for lengths of time. She was always out with friends on holiday or volunteering. Quite the social butterfly.’ Hang on though, that sounds like the 2020s Nicky Weller I’ve seen in action, following in those family footsteps. You could be writing about yourself there.

“Ha ha! I think I’m more like my Dad – more of as jack the lad, happy go lucky type! But I suppose I’m like both of them really, and I do loads of volunteering. I’m 64 this year, and for most people that means slowing down… but I can’t do that. A couple of days, then I’m bored out of my box!

“It just runs in the family. My brother’s a bit of a workaholic. Even when he says he’s having a year off he’s getting an album out, producing, or something!”

It’s funny you mentioning being more like your Dad. An abiding memory of last summer’s Here Comes the Weekend at Woking FC was you finding me across a packed clubhouse floor during the finale, From The Jam’s Sunday night set, making just enough room to stand in front of me and thrust several notes my way for sales of my Jam book on the merch desk. That certainly rekindled legendary tales of your Dad dealing only in cash back in the day.

“Ha ha! Yeah, cash merchants! Definitely. He taught us well – ha ha!”

Paul’s discography alone might clobber several chapters now, the Paul Weller Movement giving rise to what’s become a 36 years and counting solo career. And yet it must have been rather poignant for Nicky, seeing a line drawn under the Style Council era, having been part of that behind the scenes, ensuring the  ship that came in remained afloat at Solid Bond, the former Philips Studio set-up at Stanhope Place in Central London, the heart of Weller’s creative world up until then, soon sold.

 “Absolutely. The Style Council were finished and Solid Bond Studios was finished, some of the best times of my life happening there. I loved working with Paul and Mick then, and everybody else that came along with it. It was such fun. That’s also when I met by best mate Shaney – Mick’s wife – and we’ve been friends for 40-plus years now.”

You’re a proper couple yourself these days, aren’t you – quite the double act.

“I think we are. We go everywhere together. A lot of people think we are a couple. But we’re like, ‘No, we’re both married!’ Ha!”

Stuart talks with trademark passion about an era Nicky admits she can’t recall a right lot about, and you can tell the keyboard was smoking by the time he’d hammered out, ‘The Nineties was hedonism, modernism, eclecticism – and I, along with many more across the country, embraced every second.’

Did Nicky know this Chelsea ‘ooligan in those days, when he was in his own words, out and about in ‘his ‘trusty Vauxhall Cavelier’ that took him ‘all over the country in pursuit of the buzz.’?

“No, actually. He was probably tearing it up at Chelsea, in the Shed or somewhere like that! And he was really into that Nineties stuff, all the raves and that.”

Come to think of it, it’s probably best you didn’t know him then.

“Probably was – ha!”

You say your memory of those days is a little patchy, but how about that first Paul Weller Movement date at Dingwall’s in Camden? Any memories of that?

“No, to be honest! I know I was there though!”

Did you then head overseas for the Italian and German dates that followed?

“I honestly don’t remember! There’s probably an itinerary I’m on, but I’ve no clue as to whether I did or not! I remember more places like the Zap Club {Brighton} and maybe the Subterrania… that rings a bell.”

“My partner then, Russ – now my husband – was kind of instrumental then for the stage set, which was all very psychedelic, with a Magical Mystery feel and white vinyl floor, a spinning wheel…I remember him handpainting all that. It was brilliant and all so exciting to see all that. Other than that, I don’t really remember specific gigs.”

How about the tour proper that followed in late 1990, kicking off (as was the case with The Style Council when their live story came together in a televised show, if I remember right) at Goldiggers in Chippenham, Wiltshire.

“Oh, I remember Goldiggers… I’m sure I was there behind the merch stall, selling something or other.”

By the time that tour reached the Town and Country Club, Kentish Town (The Venue these days) things had certainly moved on, the solo career well and truly established, so many sit up and notice moments following from the release of ‘Into Tomorrow’ onwards, the latest example of Paul avoiding looking back and ploughing on, hurtling into his own future.

Back in the first half of the Nineties, I more or less wore out my C90s of those first two LPs, those two and Stanley Road remaining among my favourites of that or any era. But beyond that, Stuart makes a rather compelling case for an album that didn’t quite grab me the same way, but all the same carried some cracking songs – Heavy Soul. Maybe it’s time to reappraise and relisten.

“Yeah, that’s one I haven’t heard for a long time. I did a Wild Wood documentary a couple of years back, working with the same person that did The Jam movie, and it was fun digging all that up again, getting Andy MacDonald and different people on board. And they were touring all that without a deal – that was kind of interesting. But Heavy Soul, I don’t really remember. Terrible, that, innit!”

I’m always impressed by Paul remaining true to his Woking roots, and that could be said of the Weller family. There was no ditching all that for the Big Smoke and never looking back. Paul often pulls the mat up on what’s gone before, but Woking somehow survived that cull. And ’Uh Huh Oh Yeh’ in Summer ’92 was a big moment for me at the front end of the solo years.

As was the case in the promo video for early Style Council single ‘Solid Bond in Your Heart’, albeit on his scooter in that case, there’s our local hero striding around his old Maybury patch, land of my father and grandparents, an area home to my family from the 1890s up until my Nan passed away that previous summer – with that still a little raw to me – heading down that alleyway and around streets I knew fairly well, my brother having also worked there from the age of 16, having only just moved away.

I was from a council house on the other side of nearby Guildford, but this too was my manor, and an area I regularly returned to watch Woking FC. What did Nicky make of her brother bringing it all back home?

 “I thought that was great! He was proper going back to his roots, and you can see that in the photo shoots he did. And then ‘Wild Wood’ {the promo video for the single} was done over Newlands Corner…”

Yes, even closer to my own Surrey Hills and Tillingbourne Valley base, another key hometown landmark.

“Yes, and on the hill out of there was Wild Wood, the house where they put up about 25 signs before deciding to paint the wall instead, because it was getting nicked so much! It was the same with the Stanley Road signs – the council got bored of putting up new signs every week. But yeah, he went back to his roots, also around Black Barn, Ripley, and the Surrey Hills.”

Back in The Jam days, songs like ‘Saturday’s Kids’, ‘Wasteland’, ‘Liza Radley’, ‘That’s Entertainment’, ‘Tales From the Riverbank’, ‘Funeral Pyre’ and ‘Town Called Malice’ chimed with me as songs from my patch, neatly intertwined with a wealth of London-related songs. And that carried on in the Nineties with ‘Uh Huh Oh Yeh’, ‘Amongst Butterflies’, ‘Wild Wood’, ‘Stanley Road’, ‘Whirlpool’s End’, ‘Friday Street’…

“Those little hints, yeah.”

And yet from doing my Jam book, I was reminded that those songs also mean a great deal to fans in Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Lancashire, Yorkshire, the Midlands, the West Country, mainland Europe and beyond. I guess we always fit the narrative to our own life stories.

“I agree. If you think about it, any of those lyrics down through time, whatever band you’re into at the time, you make yourself think they’re writing about you.”

Perhaps that’s the art, right there, and In the Shadow of the Sun follows its subject’s stellar rise from unsigned singer/songwriter to double million-selling album artist and beyond with the help of original and rare artwork, unseen photos, press ads, tour posters, merchandise, and other rarely seen artefacts from the archives of some of PW’s biggest fans.

There are plenty of names contributing to the book or quoted within, including Weller producer Brendan Lynch, Universal kingpin and DJ Johnny Chandler (who played his part at the book’s launch party too), Go Discs! supremo Andy MacDonald, actor/presenter/musician Jonny Owen, and fellow broadcaster and presenter Gary Crowley.

Bandmates get a say too, including Camelle Hinds, Steve White and Mick Talbot, who adds a lovely piece about off-stage memories of catching Paul second on the bill to Elvis Costello at Glastonbury Festival in 1994, Paul certainly a hard act to follow that night. And then there are those who attended Paul’s live shows – from the small venues to the outdoor sold–out gigs and festivals of the era – their memories complemented by Nicky’s personal memorabilia and photos, and Stuart’s insights and knowledge as an avid music nut who lived the decade like it was his last.

I mentioned the look of this book, and I wonder, flicking through, if photographer Lawrence Watson shouldn’t also have his name on the front. This was, after all, a decade when he worked extremely closely with Paul.

“Yeah, probably should have in retrospect. That’s Stuart’s doing – not mine!”

Laurence, along with fellow esteemed photographer Grant Fleming, whose work is also featured, was certainly important to the story in that era. The whole aesthetic. And so many of his cover and inner sleeve shots, and plenty more shoots, are included within. I know he was co-credited on Paolo Hewitt’s Days Lose Their Names and Time Slips Away 1992-95, but I’d say the same applies here.

“Well, pretty much every photo in there is Lawrence Watson’s, including the one everyone probably thinks was taken in Woking for Wild Wood but was shot in Ottershaw, the little church on the hump, where he sat on them steps. A few thinking it was near where my Mum and Dad had a place. So yeah – more tips to that area.

“Lawrence found some great shots, including the fields used for the Modern Classics cover. Wicked, all that stuff. He’s not bad, is he. My Dad would give him a hard time, but he’s not bad!”

Is that right? Did Lawrence rub him up the wrong way?

Signing Up Lawrence Watson signs a few of those impressive prints on behalf of the authors

“Yeah, but Dad used to say that about everybody! None of ’em were as good as Paul!”

The book also covers the Help! project for War Child, Paul joined at Abbey Road Studios by illustrious namesake, Macca, and Noel Gallagher, as we saw the Smokin’ Mojo Filters come together, so to speak. Not so far from Nicky’s London base, although again she was busy with the Acid Jazz label back then.

I’m pleased to say In the Shadow of the Sun isn’t just about bigger names though. Fans’ memories always add colour, and one that particularly jumped out at me was provided by Janice Bartholomew, regarding the night she reckons she shunned Noel Gallagher for Paul.

“Ah, yeah, she’s great, Janice! And she’s an amazing poet and a very good writer. She’s incredible… and part of my Ripley Cast-offs knitting group!”

Who taught you to knit? I’m guessing it wasn’t your Dad.

“I actually taught myself while going through cancer treatment. I got bored so I took to YouTube and it took off from that really. That was 2012.”

Any concerns from that point, health wise?

“Oh yeah, it’s been shit for the last 14 years, but…you know, hey ho! Ha ha!”

Well, we’re still here, aren’t we?

“Yeah, still plodding on!”

There are plenty of lovely moments to bring smiles and laughs, not least talk of a drunken footie match on the pitch at Woking FC, where apparently someone lost a glass eye and everyone stopped to look for it.

There are also a few printed hand-written lyrics, such as those for ‘There Is No Drinking After Your Dead’ (Paul’s spelling, not mine), a song that wouldn’t see the light of day in the studio until Heliocentric landed in 2000 but seemed to fit that whole hedonistic era for Paul and his band circle.

I knew a fair few of the stories, but I’d either forgotten or didn’t know about Nicky and partner Russell’s key role in putting together May 1999’s Gig for Kosovo, an event that also featured Tim Burgess, Noel Gallagher, Chris Difford (who tops the live music bill at the forthcoming Here Comes the Weekend all-dayer at the 100 Club), Keith Allen, Simon Day, and the Stereophonics, to name but a few.

“That was completely me and Russell. We put that together in about three weeks, which was mental! We were a couple of walking zombies anyway after our {house} fire, but we got it together really quickly.”

That fitted in nicely with the prior War Child fundraiser.

“That’s very true. I think it was ’97 when our house burned down, then we decided to do that gig, And everything just comes round in a big circle, what with Ukraine and everything going on now.”

Where was the house you lost?

“That was in Maida Vale, the first place we got together… and we’ve now been here 40 years coming up.”

Movement Marque: Remember how we started on a winter’s night?

Yet, like your brother, there’s always been that solid bond with the hometown, never forgetting your West Surrey roots.

“Yeah, Mum and Dad still lived there, and when Dad died Mum was there on her own, then unfortunately she got dementia – like my Dad. So for the last 11 or 12 years I’d been there every single week doing stuff., with my best friend, Shaney. She’s like a sister, she’s been amazing. Every week without fail she’d be with me, taking Mum out or helping her out.”

As the youngest of five children whose Mum and Dad also succumbed to that horrible disease, I know that feeling… and with my brother and I being the furthest from home, it often fell upon my sisters to jump up to the plate when they were needed.

“I think it’s normally the girls, innit! It definitely ain’t the boys, that’s for sure! Not in our family.”

There are a few hints here of what might follow in your own memoir. So when’s that coming out, Nicky?

“Everyone keeps asking that. Do you know what, I’m gonna make… after this one’s come out, that’s kind of inspired me to crack on and get on with it. I’ll try and get it ready for Christmas, or at least for the new year.”

Any more exhibition plans, along the lines of the marvellous About the Young Idea alongside Russell and Manchester-based Den Davis?

“I’ve been speaking to Den, because we’ve been working for the last four or five years to get a permanent one in Woking, but Woking Council have got no imagination… the fact that The Jam have been the biggest thing to come out of Woking other than Status Quo… and it’s the 50th anniversary {of the first LP and single} next year!

“Den’s been bashing his head against a brick wall the last six or seven months with the council, and the mayor’s been helping him, but… well, hopefully something’s gonna happen. Even if it’s a temporary thing. But it should be permanent. I’ve left it to Den now… he’s got more patience than me! I hear my Dad on my shoulder!”

When we spoke, Nicky was yet to catch her brother’s summer tour, one going down brilliantly with fans all over. I also see a few older songs are in the set. Either Paul’s a little more nostalgic for the past these days or he’s doing some Spring cleaning ahead of his next sonic adventure. Or both.

And talking of big bro, I asked Nicky to take herself back to hear ‘Brand New Start’ for the first time, possibly sensing change was afoot again, something fresh in the offing as that first solo decade reached its end. Was that another of those moments where she felt, ‘Oh bloody hell, what’s he up to now?’

“It’s a bit like that, innit!”

It does seem to me like a seven- or eight-year circle.

“Definitely! It is like a seven-year itch for him! Someone sent me the setlist for these live shows and it’s really kind of reminiscing, I think, especially around all the albums in our book!”

Point Made: Stuart Deabill and Nicky Weller. If your name’s not down…

To grab yourself one of the few remaining copies of In the Shadow of the Sun: Paul Weller & the Nineties, and for more about its various exclusive formats, try this link. There will also be copies available at the forthcoming Here Comes the Alldayer at the 100 Club on Saturday 11 July, with ticket details here.

Meanwhile, check out this Burning Shed link or send me a message for a personalised copy via WriteWyattUK to order a copy of my love letter to Woking’s finest for Spenwood Books, Solid Bond In Your Heart: A People’s History of The Jam.

Posted in Books Films, TV & Radio, Football, Music | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Darkening Sky lightens up your day – in praise of The Suncharms

Posted on June 17, 2026 by writewyattuk

I first caught Sheffield five piece The Suncharms some 25-plus years too late… or so I thought at the time. That was at the Continental in Preston, an early 2017 comeback show when they opened for Wessex indie legends The Chesterfields, my reason for being there, and Glasgow cult heroes The Orchids, who it’s fair to say stole the show, an impassioned legion of fans from across the border ensuring a special night.

But those were important step-ups for the bands on earlier that night, and when I caught them again in September 2019 at Night and Day in Manchester, they’d both come on a storm after that long lay-off. You can guess the next part of the story, and within a few months we were all back to square one, confined to quarters. It went viral… and not in a good way. But as it turned out, that time for reflection ultimately led to great records from all three bands on that 2017 bill in Lancashire.

As it was, a year before my first sighting, The Suncharms – now as then featuring tambourine-toting Marcus Palmer (vocals), Matt Neale (guitar), John Malone (guitar), Richard Farnell (bass) and Chris Ridley (drums) – released a retrospective self-titled LP on CD for Cloudberry /Records amassing their 1990/91 output, its 14 tracks including two 12″ EPs for Wilde Club Records, compilation tracks and previously unreleased songs. And since then, they’ve ploughed on… to great effect.

The first fruits of their recording return came with Rolling Meadows, Illinois based label Sunday Records for Distant Lights in August 2021, described by publicist Simon Heavisides as ‘a souped-up take on a classic indie album with a sprinkle of shoegaze around the edges and just enough of their own idiosyncratic touches.’

And they’ve remained busy between the day jobs, releasing Things Lost in October 2023 and now Darkening Sky, which has had a fair few plays at WriteWyattUK HQ this past week or so (I know, it came out in April, but it’s been hectic, right?), your scribe well and truly enjoying a grand offering from a band that’s come on leaps and bounds during its second wave.

Nine years ago, I described them live as Bobby Gillespie fronting The Wedding Present, and there remain elements of that, that Magic Carpet and Spaceship still at their command. But there’s far more to this group once lazily labelled part of that whole shoegaze indie scene (I saw a few of those bands in the early ‘90s, including Ride, Slowdive and Lush, but it wasn’t the right time for me – I was more comfortable going back to the source influences, from The Velvet Underground to Cocteau Twins and The Jesus and Mary Chain), the sum of their wider influences down the years clearly having made a mighty impression on their 2020s output.

As Simon Heavisides put it on the sleeve notes for the new record, ‘Their second act has also been a determined case of dealing with unfinished business. Once a band with no albums to their name, they now release their third in five years. Darkening Sky comes with a real sense of making every second count, another motivation that often comes with age. Recorded and mixed by guitarist Matt, the whole album is alive with a sense of wonder. The sound is spacious and organic, and instruments are given room to breathe.’

I can’t argue with that, and from wholesome yet wistfully lonesome opener ‘Midnight Train’ onwards I’m hooked, the incoming shades of melodic guitar pop suggesting they’d have fitted in nicely out there on the road with early REM, Rain Parade and fellow Paisley Underground exponents back in the day.

There’s certainly a nod to that Eighties scene, but perhaps all the more so to original Sixties psych trippers like The Beatles and the Velvets. I also see and hear a band that could have comfortably rubbed shoulders with the later Orange Juice then followed Edwyn Collins’ path from there, as accentuated by the brass touches on the new LP opener. The same goes for second track ‘Annabel Lee’, perhaps a glimpse of where The Soup Dragons might have gone next, Marcus’ ‘roar of the ocean’ confirmation that they’ve ventured slightly further west than Ladybower Reservoir down the years.

There are also plenty of places where the Notorious Byrd Brothers or maybe Mike Nesmith spring to mind, their label’s US links seemingly all it needed to bring out those elements, not least on songs like ‘Stone Tape Rewind’, which shuffles along like a country rock ‘My Sweet Lord’. And that’s a good thing, by the way.

As for the added trumpet and subtle xylophone on next numbers ‘Monster To Me’ and ‘Air Raid Shelter’, it sounds like it was always meant to be there in the mix, albeit previously somehow lost in the arrangements amid that initial wall of sound. But I guess those influences should come as no real surprise seeing as this is clearly a collective with sharp ears, its members now somewhat long in the tooth students of their part-time art, those eclectic tastes poking through the cracks.

‘Diamonds’ to me gives a nod to classic post-punk/new wave Banshees, Cure, Teardrop Explodes and Vapors territory, before the band step into that more familiar fug of sound they were associated with on ‘1,000 Years’ and ‘Motorway Bridge’ (‘with real Sheffield motorway affects,’ Marcus tells me),  their ‘90s indie noise roots back to the fore, the four of them fresh as ever all these years on while truly fanning out their early, erm, primal appeal.

From there, they re-emerge with Orchids meets Super Furry Animals camp playfulness on ‘Interstellar’, their melodic, borrowed Sixties indie pop properties having coming out unscathed, the added brass bringing a little Love-esque Californian sunshine to their side of the Pennines.  

The golden days of choosing potential crossover chart singles have gone, but ‘Ferris Wheel’ has unlikely hit written on it, enough for me to imagine original Jesus and Mary Chain diehards reduced to waving lighters from side to side, albeit with the guitar touches in there as much Springfield as Sheffield and more Missouri than misery.

Speaking of Western influences (and we’re talking way further than West Yorkshire), ‘Winter Sun’s acoustic touches and orchestral framing suggest the spirit of Lee and Nancy has crept into the frame, leading us to the moment ‘A Snowstorm’ brings us home, albeit still in a more measured, understated, at one with themselves style.

As a case in point, Marcus never gets shouty, but he doesn’t have to, his voice more an accompaniment to those luscious melodies underpinned by sturdy and reliable bass and drums, the collective spirit more important, this 21st century incarnation remaining as honest as before but now more subtle, as is the Suncharms’ … erm, sunny charm.

Darkening Sky by The Suncharms is available via Sunday Records’ Bandcamp page via this link and also from Vinyl Exchange in Manchester (CD and vinyl) and Sunday Records’ Chicago outlet.

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Discovering The Lost Boys of Carbis Bay – in conversation with cinematographer Daniel Simpkins

Posted on February 14, 2026 by writewyattuk
Coastal Vista: Another adventure for the Carbis Bay Crew. Image copyright: Dan Simpkins

Earlier this year, the better half and I had a date at the flicks with a difference, wandering down the hill to the Regal Theatre in Redruth for the opening night of a Cornish tour of Daniel Simpkins’ The Lost Boys of Carbis Bay.

It’s not often you get a build-up and post-screening Q&A session that lasts longer than the film itself (it’s barely half an hour in full), but in no way were we short-changed, so to speak. And there are still chances to catch this indie wonder as it does its rounds, an initial six-venue tour format quickly expanded, both Friday screenings in the ‘Druth maxed out, followed by further January dates with Q&As in Newlyn, Bodmin, Saltash, Wadebridge, and Falmouth, then more this month, including those at the Flora in Helston tonight (Sat 14 Feb – sold out), The Ritz, Penzance tomorrow (Sun 15 Feb – limited tickets remaining) and the Phoenix at Falmouth (Wed 25 Feb – sold out).

Meanwhile, WTW Cinemas are screening the film on St Piran’s Day (Thu 5 Mar) at the Lighthouse in Newquay, the White River in St Austell, the Plaza in Truro (where there’s also a 15 Feb screening) and the Regal in Wadebridge, with tickets that day at £5 (see link for full details at the end of this feature).

The Lost Boys of Carbis Bay has already landed a Best Adventure & Exploration Film award at Kendal Mountain Festival, late last year, and I’d like to think there’s scope for a feature-length cut. However, as it is, it’s a winner – beautifully shot, with great lines and insight, plenty of heart, poignancy, and underlying positivity.

The general premise? We follow a group of ‘unlikely underground explorers’ as they go about their weekend hobby, visiting disused, historic tin mines, squeezing through tunnels, unearthing long forgotten and often frankly dangerous shafts, adits and hidden caverns, the viewer let in on their secret subterranean world.

I’m no potholing or climbing aficionado, but that’s only part of the premise. Don’t expect a po-faced documentary couched in designer mountaineering jargon, its know it all stars spouting competitive boasts regarding previous climbs and plunges. There are certainly highly competent climbers involved in the ranks of the so called Carbis Bay Crew, as is apparent when you hear ‘mine captain’ and main man Pat Moret talk about – with a fair amount of self-conscious understatement – past professional exploits and endeavours. But this is not some dry audio coaching video or – to the other extreme – adrenaline-packed boys’ own take on danger and derring-do (although there’s plenty of that).

Like a Chimney: Carbis Bay Crew adventurer Tim Clarke lights up. Image copyright: Dan Simpkins

It’s more about community and a sense of discovered purpose, connection and togetherness, the meat on the bones the personal stories and background subtly woven within, from a group that’s pulled off more than its fair share of heroic cliff rescues for dogs and caught out tourists.

I was lured in by the amazing locations involved, the rich history of those dank but spectacular locations and the generations of Cornishmen that worked there, and an ever-present wonder regarding what remains beneath our feet in a wondrous West Cornish land and seascape I can now claim as my own. And there’s lots of that on show here, even if the exact locations are often – understandably – not made clear.

What’s more, it’s lovely to see a film where you quickly warm to its characters – no mean feat when we’re talking a half-hour film. And they are characters for sure, a few of them present on opening night, answering questions down the front, post-screening, or – in the case of another who put in a starring role – hiding at the back (but not averse to a quick chat afterwards).

Hand on heart, I’m not likely to seek future invites on any of the Carbis Bay Crew’s adventures, however much I love what I see. A lack of head for heights and my beloved’s fear of enclosed spaces put paid to that. We’re the same when it comes to the rather compelling online videos from the fellow Celtic subterranean explorers responsible for the Ben o Cam online channel (Ben Dunstan and co, their videos often making for hairy ‘hide behind the sofa’ viewing, possessing the power to make us hyperventilate – and again, follow the link at the end for more detail). However, this was a cracking night in good company, neatly curated and introduced by the film’s executive producer, Kirsty Malcolm, representing Roll Nine. And it’s all rather inspirational and highly recommended.

All of which gave me a great excuse to track down the team behind the film, leading to a conversation with afore-mentioned director, Dan Simpkins, who prides himself in capturing ‘authenticity and emotion in every project,’ ensuring his cinematography ‘reflects the heart of the story’. So what’s he made of the public screenings and post-screen discussions so far?

“It’s been great. Whatever cinemas we’ve been to. Normally, Q and A’s burn out, and you have to wrap them up, but with this, people are so curious about the guys. It’s real fun touring it around Cornwall.”

Have the Carbis Bay Crew members joining you on stage at the end come into their own by the night, a little more sure of themselves in rather testing conditions )for a group who clearly didn’t set out to be screen stars)?

On Track: Deep underground with the Carbis Bay Crew. Image copyright: Tim Clarke

“Yeah, I think at first they were a bit like teenage boys. ‘I really don’t want to do this.’ You are putting them on a pedestal to be judged. But as it’s gone on – the more screenings they’ve gone – they’ve gained in confidence, seeing the film received well and that they’re presented well and people are fascinated by them. And now they’re properly cracking jokes too. A few times, I’ve been like, ‘Oh, it’s getting a bit borderline!’

“From a documentary perspective, it must be so weird that someone’s come in and put your story up on the screen. But each of them has kind of gone, ‘This is good’.”

I was relieved to discover this wasn’t just some thrill-seeking dynamic ‘in your face’ collection of mad camera work and extreme sport ‘rad’ images, cobbled together like a huge adrenaline rush or a parody within the parody of The Offroaders from The Fast Show. All the elements are there, but you deal with all that and manage to tell a poignant story within that limited time frame.

You also tackle the men’s mental health aspect, and for me this is more about the power of community and the friendship aspect between a gang of seemingly disparate, awkward blokes.

“Yeah, obviously there’s a part of me wanting to make this Netflix documentary with a huge climax. But the films I watch and that I’m interested in involve the nuances, and if you are making a film about an extreme sport, you have to do it from a personal angle – otherwise, the only people interested are those interested in that sport. So it was always important that we found the human angle, although I didn’t want to just do a film about mental health, because then it would be more charity led.”

Well, I didn’t find it a box-ticking experience.

“Exactly. With these guys I think I was worried initially that they may be self-aware of why they were doing it. It’s only through interviews that you sort of read between the lines and understand they’re doing it for a sense of community. They each have their own story, but the act of showing up for one another is what keeps them going.”

Hanging Around: Off on another adventure with the Carbis Bay Crew. Image copyright: Dan Simpkins

Out of interest, have you a head for heights? I’m guessing so, in relation to some of the cinematic moments.

“Heights never really bothered me, but I didn’t actually like going underground.”

That was my next question. Claustrophobia would seriously compromise your position here.

“When I was nine or ten, my parents took us to Wookey Hole, Somerset, and the tour guide started by saying there was a witch that lived underground, who could bring down the cave at any moment. Well, I burst into tears, it was horrendous!

“So I always had that in mind, not so much a phobia as a resolve to not go caving or go underground! But that was also part of the charm. I wanted to meet people who enjoyed doing that for fun.”

I only moved down 15 months ago but I’ve always been intrigued by what lies beneath, so to speak. Seeing some of the tight squeezes the likes of fellow caver BenOCam gets into only adds to that, following the tunnel networks around Cornwall’s once rich grounds for tin, copper, and so on. It’s all rather gripping… not least when it’s right under your doorstep. Add to all that the rain and storm-lashed winter we’ve just had – all those sinkholes and road collapses across the West Country. You become very aware of where you are.

“Yes, as Tim calls it, we’re like a Swiss cheese, full of holes. But what I find most crazy about Cornwall is that while there’s a certain amount that’s been charted, there are so many that have been lost to records, or new places being found. And they’re not all covered up, they’re just holes in the ground you can find. And I’ve been with these guys – it’s just incredible when you go down this hole and it just opens up into this chamber.”

It seems like you could easily get lost in the wrong hands. I get the jitters if there are left or right choices decided upon by pure instinct. Maybe you should unravel a ball of twine as you go.

“Yes, like Hansel and Gretel, having to leave breadcrumbs!”

On his website, Dan tells us he grew up by the sea in the South-West, where he ‘developed a love for the interplay between light and landscape,’ feeling that connection influences his work, ‘allowing me to adapt and use natural light and surroundings as key elements in storytelling.’

Whereabouts did he grow up?

“I’m in Cheltenham now, but I was born just outside the Cornish border. I lived in Bude, but was born in Barnstaple, as that was the nearest hospital. We moved around a lot – my dad’s a vicar – but we’ve always been South West based and always went on holidays to Cornwall. I also went to uni down in Cornwall. It’s the place I’ve spent the most amount of time, it feels like home, and I know it’s going to be the place I end up. But the industry is not in Cornwall… annoyingly.”

Award Winner: Dan receives the Adventure & Exploration film gong for The Lost Boys of Carbis Bay at 2025’s Kendal Mountain Festival. Photo: Eddy Hubble

You clearly have your ear to ground for stories. How did you come across the tale of the Carbis Bay Crew?

“You’re always looking for inspiration, Cornwall is a big inspiration for me, and I’ve always been fascinated by the Cornish landscape. One summer, we went to Geevor’s tin mining museum, a tour guide showing us around this underground section. And as a filmmaker I felt, ‘This is really cinematic’. It’s really quite interesting, how the light bends, and it’s claustrophobic.

“We were like, ‘Oh, yeah, there could be a film here!’ I asked if there were any mine workings we could get to. {Award-winning Cornish director} Mark Jenkin had just done a video with Thom Yorke (for the Radiohead frontman’s The Smile project}, in an underground mine. I was very curious about it all, and the tour guide, so Cornish, tells me, ‘You don’t want to be doing that – don’t be like that Carbis Bay Crew lot!’ And you’re forever looking for ideas like that. I looked them up, found them on Facebook and reached out.

“What I found different about them is that there was so much personality and this sense of humour about them. And when I met them, they were exactly the same. They put themselves out on social media, but very much as themselves. There was so much life to them. I didn’t know where the film was going for a long time, so it was just about following instincts. I felt I just had to keep filming these guys. It was a passion project for a few years, me and a mate working in our bedrooms, editing together. and we find it so surreal, doing what we’re doing now!”

That’s Angus Breton, who shared editing duties with Tommaso Di Paola on the film. How did they get to know each other?

“We went to uni in Falmouth, living together for two years. We’ve been best mates since, and I ended up being his Best Man. We’re similar in personality, but also a little different, complementing each other quite well.”

Award Winner: Dan Simpkins, Angus Breton, Pat Moret and Kirsty Malcolm receive the plaudits for The Lost Boys of Carbis Bay at 2025’s Kendal Mountain Festival. Photo: Eddy Hubble

I’m impressed how you get over the Carbis Bay Crew characters in a half-hour film.

“Well, we had so much footage, and there are so many other characters we could have focused on. It was almost more about the people who opened up to me. Tim was the first one where I was like, ‘Okay, I know what the film is now,’ the first to allow his time to be with me and be open. And when I left my job in London and moved down for two months to do this project, I was in the same village as Pat, so got to know him really well. He’s almost like a father figure to me now, just from sharing lifts and stuff like that. Most of the time, I wish I had a camera on me. It was those car journeys where he would randomly come up with something… and I find with men, they often have to be doing something else to speak openly in front of you.

“Benji was the only one where I was like, ‘I want to film you!’ He was the most chaotic. And I actually thought I’d finished filming when Paul reached out with his story, which is the emotional crux of the film. So I think it was just about trust – they had to know I was going to do them justice. And there were lots of strands where I started filming but it didn’t quite come off.”

There’s clearly a feature length film here… if you had the financial backing.

“That’s the thing with passion projects, especially documentary – so much is self-funded. I work on set a lot, but I’m proven as a documentary filmmaker. You have to earn your stripes before you even think about funding. And I’ve never really liked being told what I can or can’t do!”

So Jeff Bezos hasn’t yet pulled the plug on Trump and offered you 75 million to promote a film?

“Not yet, but we are trying our best to try and get it out there. We’ve independently distributed it. We’re all in full-time work, but any spare moment we’re typing emails and stuff like that.”

Looking Up: Pat Moret, seeks guidance from above with the CBC. Image copyright: Dan Simpkins

So who are Roll Nine, the company behind the film?

“Roll Nine is ran by Kirsty Malcolm, who I met when I left uni, working on a lot of editing work with her and Angus. They were really nice and when everyone was saying no to us, Kirsty put out on her Instagram account that she was looking for more adventure documentaries and stuff more in her interest. So it was almost like it was meant to be.

“She believed in the project where no one else did, really helping with advice, then eventually put money in to help complete the film. Kirsty’s done our PR as well, which allowed me to do all the cinema stuff. We owe a lot to her.”

Rewatching the trailer this morning, I was reminded of the illuminated underground bike scene. Was that just a filmmaker’s folly?

“They had the idea already. There’s this one mine – and with the Carbis Bay Crew, they’re very careful not to name them – where there’s this big open chamber with a track running all the way through. It was a passing comment that it would be fun to ride bikes down there. I don’t think they would have done it, but I heard that and felt that sounded like an ending. And yes, attaching the lights was a filmmaker’s flourish! It’s kind of surreal, but rooted in reality, and I’d hope it sort of creates a deeper meaning.”

And how did this 28-year-old rising star get into all this (his CV including some impressive short films, documentaries, commercials and pop videos so far – see link below)? The first I saw was something of a family affair, following life on his uncle’s farm, his cousin Jeff the star.

Underground Wonders: On a shoot with the Carbis Bay Crew. Image copyright: Tim Clarke

“That was my first attempt at shooting a documentary, independently, around three years ago. I worked for a camera rental company, going out testing new lenses so they could promote them online. I filmed my cousin one day, really liked the footage, and turned it into a 90-second document. And it won a Canon competition. Being from a working-class background, I never had money for my own camera, so winning that actually gave me the camera that allowed me to quit my job and keep filming.

“I’ve always been driven. As soon as I found film could be a career, I was always like, ‘This is what I want to do.’ But I’ve always wanted to do it in my own way.”

As well as the ongoing screenings for The Lost Boys of Carbis Bay, Dan’s also promoting a shorts programme, with more than a dozen screenings, running with two other films, described them as ‘very much feelgood outdoor films’. In that case, The Lost Boys of Carbis Bay has support from Hansel Rodrigues’ King Putt and Joel Porter and Alex Moore’s Frankenbiking, initially running at Halwyn, Crantock, Newquay (Thu 19 Feb) and the Regal in Redruth, the Savoy in Penzance, the Capitol in Bodmin and the Phoenix at Falmouth (all on Wed 25 Feb), the organisers promising a night celebrating ‘ordinary people doing extraordinary things’, from the world of custom biking to professional crazy golf.

And then what, Dan?

“Our next step is trying to find a platform for this film, maybe the BBC or National Geographic, something along those lines, so it’s seen beyond the cinema.”

I could see that. It’s prime BBC Four or Sky Arts territory, I’d say.

“Yeah, that’s our aim now – distribution. And that our films get funded so it’s not out of our pockets. We’ve never had big chunks of money, it’s always just chipping away where we can.”

All stills photography copyright of Daniel Simpkins and the Carbis Bay Crew’s Tim Clarke, used with permission.

For an up-to-date list of screenings and tie-in events, follow this link. There’s a further link to a promo trailer for The Lost Boys of Carbis Bay here, and you can find out more about the Carbis Bay Crew via their Facebook page. Dan’s own website is here, and while you’re at it, I recommend the BenoCam video channel (with a Facebook link here).

Most illuminating: Don’t miss The Lost Boys of Carbis Bay. Image copyright: Dan Simpkins
Posted in Adventure & Travel, Books Films, TV & Radio, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Billy Bragg – a personal appreciation

Posted on December 20, 2025 by writewyattuk

Career opportunities, the ones that eventually knock…

I’m bringing you a 1-2-3-4 with a difference today, my way of marking Billy Bragg’s 68th birthday with a few personal milestones featuring the man himself these past 40-plus years, in what I feel constitutes a neat finale for WriteWyattUK’s 2025 output. Because dreams really can come true, pop kids.

Pulling Shapes: Malcolm and Billy get into ill-advised dance-off territory (Photo: Yeovil Literary Festival)

Take one… HMV, Swan Lane, Guildford, Surrey, 19 March 1985

A landmark year was shaping up. Over those last three weeks I’d caught the mighty Ramones at the Lyceum up in town, feeling self-consciously overdressed without ripped jeans and leather, then three nights later I was back on home ground for The Smiths’ Meat is Murder LP tour at Guildford Civic Hall. And then there was Billy Bragg at my hometown venue.

Getting on for two years after he dropped a mushroom biryani off at Broadcasting House with a copy of Life’s a Riot With Spy Vs Spy for a grateful Peelie, I’d become a fan, this 17-year-old devouring his quotes in NME interviews, lapping up his three Peel sessions to date, and enamoured by his debut mini-LP and Brewing Up With. As it was, ‘Between The Wars’ never really chimed for me, though I loved the sentiments. I see it more now as his ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’.  Either way, he had his first hit, and on the day of his Civic Hall performance I nipped down out from my sixth-form college to HMV in Swan Lane to see the Big-nosed Bard of Barking in person.

That was my first proper face-to-face meeting with a music hero, and like a few occasions since I had time to over-think what I was going to say. Reaching the counter, I smiled and asked, in what I perceived to be a Peel-esque manner, ‘So, wat’s it like to have a chart-bound sound, Billy?’ He hesitated then gave a rather earnest response, and all I could do was nod and smile. I knew full well that hitting the charts wouldn’t change him. He was far better than that. Yet there he was, pensively pointing out how fickle fame was, suggesting it was likely to blow over soon. And there was me, tongue-tied, wanting to say, ‘I know, I was being ironic,’ but fearing I might sound snotty. I thought of a hundred and one witty things to say as I left, Billy already shaking hands and signing for the next punters.

And why I decided to later swap my vinyl copies of those first two signed records for a signed version of Back To Basics, I really don’t know. That’s space-saving gone mad.

That night was part of the Labour Party Jobs and Industry tour, a precursor to the Red Wedge happenings later that year. And I was all for that, Thatcher having increased her majority two summers before, this teen desperate to help turn that tide when I got the vote… albeit in a constituency the Tories had held since 1910 and would retain until a brief Lib Dem return in 2001. But I was part of Guildford’s Labour Party Young Socialists, among some two dozen members (as the wonderful Serious Drinking put it, The Revolution Starts at Closing Time), my good mates Alex (his dad our prospective parliamentary candidate) and Rick (his mum among the camping at the gates Greenham Common protestors, if I remember correctly) handing out info on the merch desk that night.

Pensive Moment: Billy Bragg give sit some thought at the Westlands (Photo: Yeovil Literary Festival)

Knowing I was a fan, Alex was shocked when he heard the man himself, pre-show, say he was awaiting Wiggy’s arrival. That was my nickname (some mates still only know me as Wiggy), him thinking I’d played down my friendship… not knowing Bill’s right-hand roadie was all known by that handle. Well, we all crouch on the shoulders of giants, eh?

My other abiding memory that night involved ‘A New England’, our man tongue-in-cheek ribbing those he said were about to launch into the extra verse written for Kirsty MacColl, not long out of the chart with her wondrous version.

Take two…. Glastonbury Festival, Pilton, Somerset, 20 June 1987

Creatively, I felt Billy’s peak was still to come. I remained fully subscribed to his political outlook, but it was the less slogan-heavy material I loved, not least the bitter-sweet relationship songs. I loved the artwork and ‘pay no more than’ notes on all those records, and I could quote Bragg (like Weller) off the top of my head on many a social occasion. Tell-tale lines about bottles of pop being opened too early in a journey from this victim of geography. A true wordsmith, as proved on Talking To The Taxman About Poetry and Workers Playtime (I was 21 years when I heard those songs, I’m 58 now, but I haven’t been for long).

And between those releases I caught him at Glastonbury ’87, the last of many great performances that Saturday that stay with me, from opening teen act Rodney Allen (for me on first hearing surely Bill’s little brother) and fellow West County boys The Blue Aeroplanes onwards, via That Petrol Emotion, The Wedding Present, and The Woodentops, all bands I loved.

At that point, my tentmates – fellow gig and footie regular Steve, down from Cobham then, I think), and a ginger-haired fella from the other side of Guildford called Mark, who I’ve not so much as bumped into since) headed off to see fellow faves Real Sounds of Africa (I’d finally catch them in mid-September, putting on an impressive performance at The Maltings, just up the road from me in Farnham) while I made my way to the Pyramid for headliner Elvis Costello, planning to re-meet later for Misty in Roots’ Other Stage finale. A great night was had by all, a night in which our Dec’s highlights included his cover of ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’, me realising for the first time what a great record that was. I wanted to see Misty in Roots too, my mate and fellow attendee Steve a big fan of their Live at the Counter Eurovision ’79 LP, but it wasn’t to be. Rather naively, I’d not expected such a massive audience, us failing to find each other among the darkness and pervading fug of special ciggies.

Similarly, our Plan B – catching Billy’s late-night marquee show, was flawed, word of his supposed ‘secret gig’ clearly getting out. I enjoyed his set though (don’t ask me what he played, I can’t recall, and others seem to have different ideas of what songs were included, unless of course – highly likely – he played more than one set that weekend), then wandered around aimlessly until around two in the morning, increasingly lost.

When I eventually found the right field, I couldn’t place the tent (in hindsight like many others), finally joining a campfire get-together, taking on the persona of the mysterious fella of no name and very few words (more knackered than stoned, probably), leaving it until it was light before trying again, eventually unzipping and crawling back in after 5am.

Another festival sighting followed two years later, in late August ’89, catching Billy at Reading Festival, Peelie compering and the Essex troubadour among the highlights, a proper soaking made up for on a day bookended by The Men They Couldn’t Hang and The Pogues.

Take three… The Fleadh, Finsbury Park, North London, 10 June 2000

Billy was rarely off my music centre in the final decade of the old century, popping up here and there, from a guest appearance with Norman Cook’s Beats International in early 1990 onwards. Somewhat aptly, I was travelling the world when The Internationale surfaced, but a love for his output never faded, my decision to carry a Union flag patch on my backpack as much down to him as The Jam, The Kinks and every other innately British act I loved. Billy’s outlook was largely mine, one of the golden generations for whom a proper Welfare State saw me at least able to part-compete. Why let our flag be hijacked by the right wing? This was my country, and I was quick to sing its praises – for all its flaws – in foreign climes, arguing against the perception of us portrayed by Thatcher and co. Who’d have thunk that flying the flag would remain an issue a quarter of a century on.

Soon came Don’t Try This At Home and that Marr-velous link-up with a Boy Called Johnny, as also heard on under-the-radar numbers like ‘Walk Away Renee (Version)’. And few singles in 1991 came anywhere close to the might of ‘Sexuality’.  Having moved in with my better half in late ’93, swapping Surrey for Lancashire, William Bloke and the following outtakes LP received plenty of plays on my system. And my own growing appreciation of Americana was at least in part down to Bill’s own journey and the Mermaid Avenue albums with Wilco.

Point Made: Billy stresses that he won’t be singing tonight… maybe (Photo: Yeovil Literary Festival)

By the release of part two, I was a father, with proper responsibilities, my gig count much reduced, but I caught him on fine form at the Fleadh in Finsbury Park, North London, in June 2000, there primarily to catch the returned Undertones but also loving the sets by Bill, his old friend Kirsty MacColl, and Lonnie Donegan. And I have it in mind he was already playing the trail-blazing ‘England, Half English’, although that wouldn’t land on record until 2002.

When The Progressive Patriot landed in late 2006, I was quick to devour it, as good a nutshell study of what Englishmen meant to my generation and his as any. And 40 years after my first BB sighting, with so many of those lyrics still pertinent in our fragile ‘one leap forward, two leaps back’ world, I still regularly return to that winning catalogue. More power to his elbow.

Take four… Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil, Somerset, 27 October 2025

So there I was on my 58th birthday, backstage with fashionably just about on time Billy, making small talk in a tiny dressing room, this rather nervous fan about to interview him on stage but soon put at relative ease, us swapping a couple of tales about various bands and inspirations while I half-craned to hear the venue’s PA on the final night of Yeovil Literary Festival 2025, an half-BB, half-BB influences playlist I cobbled together that day between autumnal wanders around lush Somerset countryside with my better half.

While Billy, not long back from the London launch of Billy Bragg: A People’s History (where he was interviewed by my fellow Spenwood Books author Iain Key), his wife picking him up at the station in Dorset ahead of a late-doors drive up the road, my beloved and I were in a neat little camping pod barely a mile out of town, close to the Yeovil Junction station The Chesterfields wrote about on cult 1988 B-side ‘Last Train to Yeovil’, with us the final campsite guests of the year, the weather kind to us on a day all leading to this career moment.

I’d had a brief chat with Billy on the phone a week earlier, and over the following days several pages of notes were whittled down to a couple of sides of A4 in big writing I could hopefully surreptitiously glance at, mid-answer. As it was, I barely needed them, with what I envisaged as 40 minutes of us chatting followed by 20 minutes of audience enquiries stretching to closer to a 45-25 split, barely a dozen of my questions landing… and all those mere prompts to set Billy off.

Brewing Up: Billy rolls with the punches at the Westlands (Photo: Yeovil Literary Festival)

And while I’d have liked to have got on to so much more, there was at least time for him to convey a message of hope from Trump’s America, following an inspirational chat he had with Woody Guthrie’s daughter Nora while in London.

He was great, of course, but two hours would have been better, us barely touching some of the territory I’d hoped to reach. All too soon, the lovely Yeovil Community Arts Association chair, Liz Pike, was anxiously hovering in the wings to present Billy with a paper rose for his efforts and try to whisk us away so the volunteers could go home… at which point the Sunday night headliner, who adamantly told the audience earlier he wasn’t going to sing that night, launched into an unexpected American folk song, leading a quick burst of ‘Happy Birthday’ directed at yours truly, his inquisitor rather embarrassed but somewhat made up.

An hour or so later, he was still in the venue, signing all and sundry for an adoring audience, taking the time and trouble we’ve come to expect and that I surely would have appreciated as that tongue-tied teenager 40 years earlier in the queue at HMV in my hometown.

And while one of the questions untouched at the end of our on-stage chat involved his future plans, it seems that our Billy is no closer to hanging up his guitar, plectrum and notebook, his recent Palestinian charity single, ‘Hundred Year Hunger’, one of my highlights of the year, the maturity in his voice and story and sentiments subtly expressed suggesting he still has plenty to offer as a performer as well as an on-point talking head regularly popping up on our television screens, in print and on stage. Keep on keeping on, Billy. The world still needs you.

Basics Instinct: Malc wonders why he parted with his first two signed BB LPs (Photo: Lottie Wyatt)

If you haven’t yet tracked down a copy of Billy Bragg: A People’s History, in large format paperback, hound your local book shop or order online via this link. It includes more than 50 contributions from Billy, who reminds us it’s ‘packed with photos from my personal archive, over 700 concert memories from fans and with contributions from a host of my friends and collaborators over the years, from Wiggy to Nora Guthrie,’ adding, ‘This is the Billy Bragg story in the words of the people!’

The same publisher, Spenwood Books, also brought us Malcolm Wyatt’s Solid Bond In Your Heart: A People’s History of The Jam in 2025, having previously published the same author’s Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade. I know, you’ve left it late to order in time for Christmas, but why not treat yourself to a New Year gift. via the same distributor, Burning Shed, by clicking on those links, or contact me for a personalised, signed copy.

Oh yeah, and Merry Christmas to you, thanking all those who have checked out WriteWyattUK this year. Here’s to a happy and peaceful 2026.

Posted in Books Films, TV & Radio, Music | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Up and rock ‘n’ rollin’ with the rest – back in touch with Slade’s Dave Hill

Posted on November 28, 2025 by writewyattuk

‘We flew on to Freeport, this island where Frank Sinatra goes, and there’s a posh hotel there, the Sheriton. Now, for a bunch of council house kids, this is a big deal! This guy, Ken, says, ‘I’ve put you in this hotel. It’s really good, just put the food on the bill. Nod was in one room that had an adjoining door with Jim, and I was with Don. And it’s overlooking the sea. It was very nice. We were all going, ‘Ooh, look ’ere – fillet steak!’

I said, ‘It’s a great place, innit. I went in the bathroom, and they’ve a thing in there where you can wash your feet.’

‘Have you got it yet? Ha! I said, ‘It’s bloody great, I put my feet in there!’ And he said, ‘It’s a bidet, Dave!’

A staggering 54 years after Slade topped the UK singles chart for the first time with the wondrous ‘Coz I Luv You’, Dave Hill is there in all his rockin’ glory on my computer screen, chatting away on Zoom about his confusion at the bathroom arrangements in a swish hotel on the island of Grand Bahama, handy for Lucaya Beach, this council house lad from Wolverhampton (he was born in Devon, but always a Black Country lad at heart) transporting us back to 1968, having lost none of his boyish wonder when it comes to relaying tales about his adventures in music down the decades.

As well as his ’N Betweens bandmates Noddy Holder, Jim Lea and Don Powell – the group that became Slade – the other fella mentioned is Ken Mallin, a Willenhall lad who in 1968 lured the foursome out to the Bahamas, more than 4,000 miles from home. And Dave, 22 at the time and for whom holidays more likely involved trips to Rhyl, Tywyn or Skegness, was clearly in his element on his first trip to truly exotic climes, finding himself in what proved ‘too good to be true’ circumstances in the lap of luxury.

For despite what their Midlands agent might have told them about that dream booking (and bear in mind that the youngest, Jim, was barely 19), they were soon on for a major reality check, shifting circumstances ultimately bringing them together, setting them up for an amazing quarter-century working together.

This was even before Ambrose Slade came to be, guitar player Dave and drumming bandmate Don, who first joined forces with The Vendors, part of the ‘N Betweens by 1964, joined within two years by mighty-lunged singer/guitarist Noddy and gifted young all-rounder Jim on bass guitar, the new line-up soon bedded in, that classic Slade fourpiece remaining together (at least in the studio) until 1992. And by then they’d amassed 24 top 40, 16 top 10 and six No.1 singles as well as three No.1 LPs on the UK charts, quickly building a major international fanbase, the world’s love for the band still very much evident today… and not just at Christmas.      

As for that early ‘90s split – main songwriters Nod and Jim having decided they were done – that wasn’t the end of it for Dave, old pal Don soon rejoining him as a new version of the band took shape. Initially known as Slade II, the pair in time allowed to drop the suffix, continuing to tour together for another quarter of a century or so before a fall-out ended that working partnership in 2020, Dave and John Berry (vocals, bass, violin, on board since 2003) these days joined on stage by Russell Keefe (vocals, keyboards) and Alex Bines (drums). And now that unit has announced its ‘final Xmas tour’… not as if that’s the end of the story, according to ‘H’.

In a couple of weeks’ time, it’ll be 52 years since Dave was seen prancing around on Top of the Pops in trademark eye-catching clobber miming along to ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’, the third Slade single in that momentous year of 1973 to go straight in at No.1 on the UK chart, something no act had ever achieved before. Elvis only managed it twice in his lifetime, and The Beatles once. Even when The Jam saw their third single go straight in at the summit, their December 1982 finale ‘Beat Surrender’, their feat was over the space of two years, with Slade’s three in a year not equalled until Take That in ’93… and they needed Lulu to get them over the line.  Besides, charts meant bugger all by then. Not like in my day (says the old bugger).

SuperYob Culture: Dave Hill on our Zoom call. Photo collage: Malcolm Wyatt

We’ll get back to the Bahamas again later, but first I’ll go back to the beginning of our online chat, my iconic interviewee asking ‘Can you hear me?’ as we stare blankly at each other… albeit Dave with more rock star poise, as if he’d just stepped out on stage at Castle Donington.

Loud and clear, H, loud and clear.

‘Can you see me?’ he added. I certainly could… catching sight too of some of his treasured six-string instrument collection behind him.

‘A little view of my guitars. Ha!’

Incidentally, I tell him, when I was at the Louder Than Words music book festival in Manchester recently, I chanced upon and had a brief chat with former Adam and the Ants guitarist Marco Pirroni. Were his ears burning? We got talking about a certain guitar he bought in Birmingham back in the day, the stuff of Slade legend.

‘Marco has got my guitar! He’s got the original Superyob! Apparently, he used to watch me on Top of the Pops and had a thing about that guitar. Which I understand. It’s a good story, y’ know, he goes into that shop in Brum and they don’t know who he is. ‘Who the ‘eck’s this guy?’ they’re saying, ‘It’s not for sale.’ But he got it, didn’t he!

‘The shop was run by a man called David Quill. He had Musical Exchanges, a very big shop on Broad Street by the indoor arena, on the main drag into the centre of Birmingham. They had a small shop at first, and I remember walking in, looking for something, and it transpired that I was going to part company with that guitar. I spoke to David, and he said, ‘I’d be glad to give you three really good guitars for that. We could use that as our calling card.’

‘There was a young guy called Gary Chapman hanging about, quite young then, he wasn’t working there at the time, but remembers me coming in. I had a semi-acoustic SG-shape, really good Gibson, I had a Fender, and I think there was another guitar. Basically a swap, he put the Superyob guitar in the window, and they made these cards with it on. People were looking in the window, saying, ‘I’ve seen that guitar before. Oh, that Slade, isn’t it!’

‘And then Pirroni comes in, because Adam and the Ants were playing in Brum, and they hadn’t got a clue who he was. They just thought it was somebody come off the street, having a go. They tell him it’s not for sale, and he said, ‘Everything’s for sale!’ I think he drummed up a funny figure and went for it. But he didn’t come back himself – he sent the roadie with the cash.

‘I met up with him in London with a guy working for Fender, and he relayed the story to me. And in the end Madness borrowed the guitar…’

Indeed they did, Chrissy Boy Foreman playing it on the ‘Shut Up’ promo video.

Flame Proof: From the WriteWyattUK collection

‘Correct! Then, next thing, this arena in London approached, wanting to do a memorabilia sale, various things, asking if he would loan the guitar. They put it in a big frame. I saw it there, you could press a button and it tells the story about it. They also got me to send some clothes. A bit like what the Beatles had in Liverpool {The Beatles Story}. I assume Marco’s got it back, because I never saw that again. I still think they’ve got my cape somewhere. They had memorabilia from Bolan and all sorts.

‘It’s certainly iconic. I also had YOB I on my Rolls-Royce. Mind you, I flogged that, and can you believe the number plate was a great deal more money than the car? Ha! I offered it to Sotheby’s. I thought they could put it in a memorabilia sale. They said, ‘No, we won’t do that. We’ll put it in a proper sale as a classic car,’ being the old Rolls-Royce shape. They said, ‘We’ll film it and advertise it.’ It was quite funny when I went down to deliver it – the bloody exhaust went! It was going all wrong, so I pulled up outside Sotheby’s. I’d come down from the Black Country in this gold car, walked in, there’s a bloke knocking about, and I said, ‘Can you help me? I’ve brought this car. It’s going to go into an auction with some very classic cars.’ He said, ‘Oh yes, I know where that is.’

‘It was RAF something or other, just outside London. I said, ‘There’s only one problem, the exhaust’s gone, and it’s making a noise.’ He said, ‘That’s not a problem. I used to work for KwikFit.’ So he got a suit on, and came in the car with me. It was all farting and blowing, and we went just outside London where he got some gunk, got under and started repairing it. And it was brilliant. So I took it to the event and left it. Three days later, I went down, and it went past the reserve. I’d had 13 years with that car, so it had paid me back, you know.’

Including your wedding hire sideline business at one point?

‘Yes, that was a going joke. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but there’s Noel Gallagher talking to Ricky Gervais, who’s taking the piss out of me. Noel’s going, ‘Oh yeah, Dave Hill went to Australia, and they come off with some glittery hat or something, when they were out there with Quo…’ He tells this story, it’s quite funny, and Ricky asks if it’s true I had this wedding business. And he says, ‘Oh yeah! You could rent a pop star, and it was an extra few quid if he turns up for the wedding.’ Obviously, it was a little low period in my career at the time.’

Remind me, was that just before Slade’s famous rebirth at Reading Festival in 1980?

‘I think it was after that. We’d already done Reading. As the years rolled by, the records weren’t selling particularly, after a few big hits, and having three kids… this would lead to me reforming the band in the end. I rang Nod and said, ‘I think I’m going to flog the car. It’s doing nothing, it’s in the garage, I never take it out, and when I do, kids let the tyres down!

‘I’d moved to an area where having a Rolls Royce was a bit too showy. Nod said, ‘Well, you’ve had your mileage, you sell it.’ And it was a relief when I did, but as the years rolled on, towards the end of the ‘80s and into the 90s, we had a bit of a hit, ‘Wall of Sound’, our last hit, then in 1992 it was all over. I spoke to Nod, said, ‘I really need to do something.’ By then he’d finished with touring and making albums, didn’t want to do that anymore, and I understood his reasons but I kind of missed it… and I had a mortgage to pay.

‘So I spoke to Nod about the use of the name. I wanted to say what I felt about that. I’d been contacted by Suzi Quatro’s husband {her long-time guitarist, Len Tuckey, the pair divorcing in 1992} and he said to me, ‘You don’t want to form a new group, you need to go out as Dave Hill’s Slade or Slade. So I put it to Nod – there was just me then – and he really understood, which was great. I suggested Dave Hill’s Slade and Nod said, ‘Why don’t you call it Slade II? I thought that was a good start. I couldn’t control the ‘II’ though – sometimes promoters took that off – but that was in 1992 and I haven’t stopped playing since…

‘And now I play as Dave Hill’s Slade, everybody’s happy with it, and it doesn’t really matter, because everybody knows I’m doing it and I’ve kept the songs alive.’

In fact, he’s now been out there doing his thing without Nod and Jim for more than 30 years. And yet, as I put it to him, he’s still only 48, right?

‘Good one! Yes, my bass player says, ‘He looks really good for 40-odd, doesn’t he? Ha!’

I say that, but I do realise that next April you’re in line to hit the big ‘Eight-Oh’.

‘Yes, and that’s when I shall release a solo album, which has been worked on and I thoroughly enjoyed. I didn’t write in the hit years, but the more I wrote, the better I got. I’ve also got a voice now, which I didn’t have before, but primarily guitar playing remains important to me, and Nod’s encouraged me to step outside of Slade, do an album for myself. And it’s a true friend to advise me like that. I trust his opinion, and he was right. I went ahead, started to put it together, and I’m very happy with it.’

So will this be a whole new phase, the octogenarian Dave Hill stepping up to the plate?

‘Mmm, I suppose when I saw Rod Stewart on Glastonbury, it’s not remarkable to see that people you know… Being a guitar player is different, but I have two excellent singers, because that’s the only way you can cope with the tunes. They’re not Noddy Holder, they know that, but they’re really good singers, the band is very happy, and it’s been together quite a few years now. And my bass player {John Berry} has been with me for 23 years. The phase I feel that’s happening… there is something natural going on with me…’

I should point out that I wrote a few questions ahead of my chat with Dave, things I wanted to get on to. I shouldn’t have bothered. I think I’d managed two or three by this stage. It’s more about prompts really, H hardly drawing breath.

‘This year they re-released and remastered the movie we made in the Seventies, Slade in Flame, and we went to a premiere on the first of May in London at the British Film Institute, and I felt like Tom Cruise when I walked in. A new Tom Cruise, y’ know! Me and Nod had a really good time, met some of the actors in the film, and some of the people that worked on it. David Puttnam was the producer, Richard Loncraine was the director, who also became quite successful after Slade in Flame, and Tom Conti was a new actor who certainly got more work after our film. Then there was Johnny Shannon, who’s not with us now. He was in Performance, and there was my girlfriend in the film… although I seem to have several girlfriends in the film, while nobody has any girlfriends in the rest of the band…’

He’s about to go off on another tangent, so I’ll add that he was about to mention Sara Clee there. Anyway, carry on…

‘And that Mark Kermode (the film critic) said about me. ‘Dave Hill is either a really good actor or he’s just playing himself.’ And he was dead right!’

I’ll let you decipher that response, readers.

Nod’s Nod: Dave’s old pal Noddy Holder with his copy of Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade

‘But the decision to re-bring it out was remarkable, because it wouldn’t cost us any money for them to remaster it, to brighten it, and it looked so good when I sat there. I took my son down, Noddy took his down, his son met my son, and it was ever so nice, we stood there thinking we’ve done this all those years ago, and look at it now!’

When I first interviewed you, a decade ago, you were still a little unsure of the film, still thinking it was a miss-step. I’m guessing you’ve had a rethink since.

‘I think I saw it in a different light. I thought the fans wouldn’t be comfortable watching us arguing in a film, when we were still currently massive.’

I guess it was confusing for some, not least that it was set in the late Sixties in an era when we were more likely to get nostalgic about 1950s rock ’n’ roll days.

‘Yeah, the way I viewed it was like this. It made more sense now. And the decision (Slade manager) Chas Chandler made to have a serious film, not a silly film like A Hard Day’s Night, but a film that had truth in it… Because, you know, a lot of the stories in the film are true, although not necessarily things that happened to us. The film is a little Get Carter like, a bit tough, but acting-wise I thought the four of us did a really good job considering we had no experience of acting… although I’m not saying anybody rushed to get us again!’

Well, you were rather busy.  

‘Well, yes, with commitments… I think that’s one of the words!’

Before I came on to you to this afternoon, I played something that was topping the charts 44 years ago, this point in 1971 having marked your second week at No.1, ‘Coz I Luv You’.’

‘Ooh!’

I know a few of the Top of the Pops performances were wiped, so this may have been one for European TV, but in the footage you’ve got a blue satin top on and the band are playing in the round, the audio improved with use of the studio version. And that song sounds as fresh today as it ever was.

Loud Hailer: Dave Hill with Play It Loud (Photo: John Barker / Slade Are For Life – Not Just for Christmas)

‘It’s a great record, that! But we were a little unsure. We had a hit with ‘Get Down and Get With It’, a rock song, and the DJs of the day were saying, ‘What’s your next one going to be? Another rock song?’ So we thought that’s what would happen. But they’d {Slade’s management} told us all to write a song, and Jim said, ‘We’ve got this song with a violin in it.’ Chas said, ‘Well, what’s it sound like?’ Nod had an acoustic guitar, they started to play it, and Chas said, ‘That’s great. That’s a hit. In fact, that’s a number one!’

‘He was adamant about that. And when we made the record, it sounded so fresh, with all the clapping, you know, the stomping, the violin. Jim’s a really good violinist, Nod’s voice was very commercial sounding, and it was a really good record. I played it to my sister, and she said the hairs on the back of her neck were tingling. She said, ‘That sounds fantastic!’

Carol was clearly a good judge too.

‘Well, she’s an entertainer, like me. A dancer, a singer, an actress, everything. She said the feeling of it was strong, and she was right. We didn’t know it’d be a No.1, but it didn’t take it long to get there!’

I often gaze back at Slade historian Chris Selby’s cracking Slade gigography (linked here), going right back to the days of the earlier bands you all featured in- in Dave’s case starting with the Sundowners – and I’m reminded that 60 years ago you were in Germany (two and a half years before that Bahamian residency), between dates with the ’N Betweens at the Habarena club, Dortmund, and New York City club, Witten. Heady days, eh?

‘Ah, the Habanera club was on our first trip abroad with the original band – not the band that became famous – and I remember it was the first time I’d ever gone out with a German girl. She was 17 and came to the gig. We were entertaining a lot of (British) servicemen staying in Germany that used to come along.

‘We also started to come across pomme frites {in fact, I’m sure he said ‘pomme fritz’} topped with what we thought was salad cream. I said, ‘They put salad cream on their chips!’ and they said, ‘It’s not salad cream, it’s mayonnaise!’ We got used to that and used to go for hühnchen – chicken – and pommes frites. There was a guy from Canada with a little eating place right by the Habanera. We used to call him Canada Pete and would go scoffing down there.

‘When we went back to England, we thought, well, we’ve been to Germany, and when The Beatles came back, they made it. But that wasn’t the case. It didn’t make any difference.’

While Hamburg arguably proved to be the making of The Beatles, for Slade it was more likely to have been their stint on the Bahamas, that highs and lows experience proving to be the bonding experience that truly brought the band together.  

‘Yeah, the trip to the Bahamas, when we flew to Nassau. We didn’t think it was really going to happen. The guy who wanted us to come over was from our local area. There were a lot of strange things going on with this guy… not that we knew that at the time. The agent said, ‘The tickets have come through. He’s booked you on a plane from Gatwick. You’ve got to fly the gear over by cargo. So we flew to Nassau, which sounds a little James Bond, and when we got off the plane, me and Nod are going, ‘’Ruddy ‘ell, they got grass skirts on there!’ Then he says, ‘They’ve give us a drink with a bloody flower in it!’

‘You could make a film out of that story. The whole idea of us going there was always a little unusual. It was very warm, very humid, very nice, right? Not known to council house kids in Britain. But they took us down the club, and I saw cockroaches larking around in the dressing room. The very fact it was called the Tropicana {the venue they were booked at} sounded a little strange. The idea was that a British band would attract Americans coming over there. But it developed into a completely different ball game. We were there a couple of weeks playing this club, hardly anybody in, and the guy looking after it, Eric, was out of his box most days. He looked like a soul singer, but was slightly bonkers, with a dodgy eye.

First Footing: Don, Dave, Noddy and Jim on a freezing cold winter’s day on Pouk Hill for 1969’s Beginnings

‘Two weeks on, the boss of the Sheraton said, ‘Who’s paying this bill? It’s $2,000.’ We said, ‘Oh, Ken’s in charge. He’s managing the money, we’re just working the club.’ He said. ‘Well, I need to talk to him, someone’s got to pay this.’ I said, ‘Fine, we’ll get hold of him.’ But he wasn’t around. There’s a knock on the door later, and it got a bit rough. Two guys with dark shades, mafia, standing at the door. ‘Where’s Ken? We’re gonna kill him. He owes us money.’

‘I said, ‘What do you mean, who are you?’ He said, ‘We loaned him money to bring you over.’ I said, ‘It’s nothing to do with us, we don’t know anything about that.’ He said, ‘Well, we’re gonna get him!’ It was like Get Carter. The next thing, it turns out Ken disappeared, and he’d lied. We thought we’d met his sister, who had something to do with loaning the money. It wasn’t his sister at all, but we didn’t know until after. We said to this guy, ‘Go and see his sister.’ He said, ‘He hasn’t got a sister. That’s his Mum!’ We thought, ‘This looks a bit tricky.’

‘Then the people that run the club decided to flog it, and in came some Americans from Miami. The hotel got in contact with the new owners, said, ‘We spoke to the band. They owe us $2,000, we need to start taking part of their wages.’ And that’s what they did. They put us in a staff apartment then, four beds in one room, bog on one side, and a kitchen. But we learned to live with each other at that time.

‘There was an awful lot of substances going on around the island, y’ know. I didn’t go for it personally. I’d never get anywhere near any of that, but that was going on and there were all sorts of strange hippies knocking about, peace and love and all that – it was the late Sixties, with the flower power mob. We made a few friends though, and by the end we had to hide from each other so they didn’t notice we might be a group. I left the day before, slept on a beach… well, I tried… until the crabs come at me. I then went up to Nassau airport, slept in a bloke’s car until the others arrived. I owed 50 bucks to some bird I fancied on the island. She had a big brother – I didn’t want him to find me!’

They got back in one piece, thankfully, three months after flying out, the following autumn and winter spent honing their sharpened and more diverse live set on the UK circuit, mostly around the Midlands. Come the new year, they were recording the debut Ambrose Slade LP, Beginnings. They were still a couple of years away from true elevation to the big time, but were on their way.

As for that initial German tour in late ’65, I reminded Dave that 60 years ago, while Noddy was on the same circuit with Steve Brett and the Mavericks, some four months before he and 17-year-old Jim debuted with them – the ’N Betweens were supporting Generation plus Peter and the Wolves at the Pavilion on the seafront at Exmouth in South Devon on December 3rd, followed by shows far closer to home – at Wolverhampton Civic, Walsall Casino, the Golden Torch in Tunstall, and so on. And it was quite a circuit then, right?

‘Ooh, the Golden Torch. I forgot that one! That’s in the Potteries, innit?’

That’s it, and a bit of a special venue on the old Northern Soul circuit. And you upped your repertoire with a few soul records while in the Bahamas in ’68, I seem to recall.

‘That’s right, and there was another one, The Place, that was all soul music. That’s how we got into all that. We also learned ‘Born to be Wild’ when we were in the Bahamas, a Steppenwolf record. Nobody in England had heard it. And ‘Journey to the Centre of Your Mind’. Very cosmic, right!

‘When we came back from the Bahamas, we were a somewhat changed band. We actually played quieter, because we had a lot of problems with the female boss of the club. There was a guy that worked there, ‘The Iceman’. He was a real Mr. Cool! He used to come to the stage and say, ‘She doesn’t like you playing loud. She’s going to put a bulb above your head. If the light comes on, she’s going to switch you off, right?’ Anyway, she come down the front shouting at us, and we ignored her, so she goes back to the Iceman, saying, ‘They’re not listening to me. Go and cut his strings!’ So he takes a big pair of scissors, comes up to Nod and says, ‘I won’t do it, but she wants me to cut the strings off your guitar.’

Thumbs Aside: when Dave’s version of Slade saw him touring with Trevor Holliday, Don, and Steve Whalley, right, who also fronted Sad Cafe and the Don Powell Band and sadly passed away in September

Talking of which, at this point I let Dave know we’re likely to end up cut off soon, time running out on our online session. But he tells me, ‘You can always come back – you know that, don’t you. Problem is, there are so many stories. You could write a book just talking to me, y’know.’

True enough. And leading on from his cut strings tale, I relaid a story I was told for Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade about Nod, Jim, Dave and Don playing not far from my old Lancashire patch at a venue called Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Darwen on the last day of October ’71. Just 10 days after they completed the recording of the iconic Slade Alive! at Command Studios, Piccadilly, London. While ‘Coz I Luv You’ riding high in the charts, the band first promoting that momentous single with a performance on Top of the Pops on October 21st, Pat Fleck recalled that this was hardly a band being afforded any slack, for all their new-found success. Apparently, Noddy was warned by the venue’s manager to stop swearing or they’d cut the power. As Pat put it, ‘Of course, Noddy didn’t stop swearing, and the power was duly cut. It only came back on after Noddy promised to be a good boy.’

And that reminded me of a similar tale concerning a venue barely two miles from my door here in West Cornwall, Slade playing – with very little fanfare, judging by the West Briton that week – the Flamingo Ballroom in Pool, between Camborne and Redruth, on Thursday 5th October 1972, the site of the venue these days holding a Morrisons superstore we tend to visit for the weekly ‘big shop’.

‘I remember that place, yeah!’

At that point, ‘Mama Weer All Crazee Now’ was slipping down the charts after three weeks at the summit, the band’s third No.1 single, with Slademania building all the time… yet the band still honoured an earlier booking cancelled (I found one in July at the Corn Exchange, Penzance, 30 miles down the road, and there may well have been another set for early September) when they headed off on an US tour, joining Humble Pie, Sly and the Family Stone, Boz Scaggs, the J Geils Band, and Peter Frampton en route.

According to the venue’s adverts in the West Briton, it was £1.25 on the door or £1 in advance from The Garden, Penzance (aka the Winter Gardens or the Wints, a venue which attracted many of punk’s leading lights a few years later, including the Sex Pistols, Ramones, Talking Heads, The Damned, The Adverts, Elvis Costello’s first show with the Attractions, The Saints, The Police, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, UB40 and U2, as memorably honoured in Simon Parker’s wonderful PZ 77: A Town, A Time, A Tribe, which necessitates a feature of its own on this website, soon as the stars align), which seemed to be the co-promoter, with Strife supporting and the promise of ‘Lights and Disco’, provided by the Chris Warren Discotheque. Heady days.

And among those who saw Slade at the Flamingo was Kevin Lean, also featured in Wild! Wild! Wild! He told us, ‘That night they played all their hits and more. Tartan was the rage then, and skinhead was the rage, and us youngsters followed suit, with Doc Martens, braces, the lot – to think we used to dress like that! I was courting a girl when I had my hair exactly like Noddy’s (permed). At the same time my girlfriend sent a photo into a Women’s Own competition, ‘Copy a Star’, and lo and behold, I won it and was matched with Noddy! Good days!’

What’s more, I also read somewhere that night the Flamingo owner, Joy Hone, told them to turn the volume down or ‘I’ll pull the plug, my lovelies.’ And that’s something else I put to Dave.

‘That sounds like it could be a true story. More than once that happened, by the way! And I do remember something he said up north, and they said they wouldn’t have us back! Haha!’

Meanwhile, although Dave clearly deserves time off for good rockin’ behaviour after all these years on the road, I can’t imagine him not touring the world to the same extent from now on. He’s going to miss all that, surely. Or is he looking to the future now (it’s only just begun)?

‘With regards to dates here and abroad and all that, that will remain as long as I want to do it. And for me, I feel although I’m coming on 80, that makes no difference whatsoever. Look at Norman Wisdom, he was still jumping up and falling off bloody things when he was 90! My point is, why would I leave something that I love so much? If it wasn’t working for me, that might be different. But it is working for me.

Required Reading: Dave Hill’s 2017 Unbound memoir alongside 2023’s Spenwood epic, Wild! Wild! Wild!

‘The only thing I’m going to change is that the UK tour will be different next year. It will be cherry-picked, one or two shows, and bigger venues. The rest of the work in England remains the same – Butlins, and all those things I do. Also, working abroad is a lot easier, because they pick me up, the rest of the band too, and they organise the gear. I find it very pleasurable. I was in Holland last week and did two shows, and it really was excellent. And when I played with Alice Cooper and people like that this year, and Billy Idol, it was so much fun, because the crowds were big.

‘I just stood there one day, thinking there’s nothing quite like this. It’s everything I worked for. I stand there and I’m completely in control of it, because I’m somewhat the last man standing on that stage, right?’

And with that our link was lost and Dave was gone, probably with just about enough time for a quick cup of tea (maybe even a cup-a-soup) before his next call. Here’s to the future, Dave, it’s only just begun. Keep on rocking, into the next decade and beyond.

Dave Hill’s Slade are joined on their final Xmas UK tour by Oxfordshire four-piece Sons of the Seventies, playing covers of classics from the era. They open at the White Rock, Hastings (Fri 28 Nov) and Dreamland, Margate (Sat 29 Nov), then head for Holmfirth Picturedrome (Wed 10 Dec) before O2 drop-ins at Liverpool Academy (Fri 12 Dec), Bournemouth Academy (Sun 14 Dec), Oxford Academy (Tue 16 Dec), Shepherd’s Bush Empire (Wed 17 Dec), Newcastle City Hall (Thu 18 Dec),  Birmingham Academy 2 (Sat 20 Dec) and the Ritz, Manchester (Mon 22 Dec), with tickets via here. For more information head to the website or head to Instagram or Facebook.

You can also order a copy of the hardback edition of Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade (Spenwood Books, 2023) via Burning Shed or direct from the author via this website for a signed and personalised copy… while stocks last.

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Holding on for tomorrow… and all our yesterdays – talking Blur with Dave Rowntree

Posted on November 21, 2025 by writewyattuk
Band Substance: Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon, shot by Dave Rowntree all those years ago

At the risk of reigniting that phoney Battle of the Bands nonsense, the major hype (and then some) the mainstream press caught on to over a supposed Blur vs Oasis feud was never where I was at in the mid-1990s. Turning on the telly then – and again this summer with regard to the latter act – you’d think the entire nation was all-consumed by their respective labels’ tiresome Britpop shenanigans. I loved both bands’ output, buying up the records like millions more, but never truly felt a need to catch Blur at Glastonbury in ’94 or Mile End in ’95, nor Oasis at Knebworth in ’96. All a bit too big for me, like watching your favourite non-league sides scale the heights to the Premier League only to find you’d struggle for a season ticket from there because of increased demand.

I continued to splash out on the quality product in Blur’s case when the new LPs and side-projects rolled out, but I’d much rather have caught both acts when they were playing smaller clubs and weren’t being routinely touted as the biggest things since David Gates’ sliced outfit. However, when I saw the premise of a new book from musician, composer and political activist Dave Rowntree, best known as the drummer for Blur, it truly resonated, seeing as it concentrates on the early days… before Parklife took them to that next mega level. I loved that LP and many more that followed, continuing to follow the four-piece’s journeys in sound, but reading about the period up to ’93 was of more interest to this indie lad at heart.    

No One You Know: Dave Rowntree’s Early Blur Photos comprises a series of evocative images captured by their founder member and percussionist in those formative years, snapping away with a newly purchased Olympus OM10 35mm camera behind the scenes as Blur progressed from recording days at Maison Rouge in Fulham, West London, to debut overseas adventures in Japan, Canada, the USA and Mexico. Their first proper adventures, you could argue.

As Dave puts it in his introduction, ‘Outside the UK music press echo chamber very few people knew who we were and wouldn’t do until the release of our third album, Parklife, the four Brit Awards and the very public spat with Oasis. The pictures I took are of a band right at the start of their career. They’re of what we did between the gigs, interviews and photo sessions. They are of us hanging out, relaxing, travelling, eating and, especially in the early days, drinking. They are snapshots of what life in Blur was really like in the first few years when the TV cameras and tape recorders were turned off.’

En route, we get hundreds of previously unseen photographs, Dave capturing many an eye-catching insider moment, including close-up and personal pics of singer Damon Albarn, guitarist Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James and himself in those early stages of that rise to the top – from playing games on the tour bus to larking around backstage, messing about in hotel rooms, at video shoots, with fans and friends. And it serves as a neat document of what it’s like to be in a young band during those vital first few years, ‘when everything is new, romantic and fresh.’

There’s also a personal foreword and Dave’s memories attached to the images, No One You Know – its title taken from the sign on the front of the tour bus as they made their way across North America – providing a visual insight into the first few years of one of Britain’s most successful, well-loved bands, from one of only four people who knew what it was really like.

All a perfect excuse to track down Dave in the week he followed an interview with John Robb at the Louder Than Words music literature festival in Manchester with dates at the Cellar Arts Club in Worthing, West Sussex (Thursday, 20th November) and Waterstones in Yeovil, Somerset this weekend (Sunday, 23rd November, where he’ll be interviewed by self-confessed cardigan-wearing writer, apparently ‘one of the 20 most rebellious women in Bristol’, Jane Duffus).

Dave was on his way up to the capital when we spoke, the 61-year-old with the impressive CV spanning several genres these days based near my old patch around Guildford, Surrey, where I left for love in late 1993… around the time Blur were working with Stephen Street and Stephen Hague (they only tended to work in the studio with blokes called Stephen in those days) at the afore-mentioned Maison Rouge, across the road from Chelsea FC’s Stamford Bridge home, 30 miles from my old front door in Shalford.

‘Ah, I know Shalford – very nice! A small world, as they say.’

Did I ever mention that The Stranglers rehearsed in the scout hut at the end of my road, where I attended Cubs, that an early incarnation of The Vapors did the same at the village hall, and Phil Collins was a local in my mate’s parents’ pub, where he once jammed with a fella called Clapton one Christmas? Oh, apparently I did, so I best move on, telling Dave there and then his book provides a great little snapshot of Blur at a pivotal spell in their career. I also cut to the chase and asked whether his assertion that his ‘foggy memory of the early days is certainly the despair of those who know me well’ was down to classic rock ’n’ roll excess or just a poor memory.

‘I’ve always had a poor memory for certain things. I’m terrible at remembering names. I’ve always struggled to find words. Halfway through a sentence, I’ve realised I don’t actually know the name for the thing I’m about to need to name and have to divert the sentence elsewhere. I’ve always been like that.’

I know that feeling. He has my sympathy.

‘Being in a band is different every day, but fundamentally it’s quite a repetitive thing. You do thousands and thousands of shows and do an awful lot of days in the studio, and those tend to merge into one. I think that’s really what it is, so unless something remarkable happens at a show, it’s often quite hard – a month or so later – to remember which one that was. ‘What gig was it in Boston?’

I can imagine that. And I suppose you’ve been on, for want of as better description, something of a treadmill at times.

‘Well, treadmill is rather a pejorative word, isn’t it? I was doing what I always wanted to do. It was bloody hard work, but I wouldn’t have changed it for the world.’

Indeed. I can’t imagine you’d ever have been tempted to see out your initial role as a computer programmer for Colchester Council. And if you had, you’d surely have contemplated (at 61) retirement by now.

‘I’m not even sure they have computer programmers at local authorities anymore! That’s all a thing of the past. But yeah, I’d have been miserable had I not got to be in a successful band. That was my passion, what I desperately wanted to do. The reality is, most people who desperately want to do it don’t get to do it anyway. That’s kind of where we were at the start of the book.

‘In the first few years of the band it was far from clear that we were going to be able to go on to have a career, because we were a tiny little band, unknown everywhere really, but unknown especially in the places we were just starting to tour – in America, Japan, Europe – and the music we were playing was very unfashionable in those days. It wasn’t until the mid-’90s when suddenly the fashion changed and what we were doing became very fashionable. It then had to have its own chart, so you could be in a chart, because there was no hope of bands like ours grazing the main chart. In fact, that was quite a laughable idea.’

True, and there were so many bands on the cusp of it around then. It’s almost like those sliding doors moments where, while you worked hard from the very beginning, there were still elements of luck required at certain points to ensure it turned into the huge story it became.

‘Absolutely, there are a thousand of those moments, and things that seemed like a massive disaster at the time turned out to be fundamental to the making of the band. The classic thing of being ripped off by our first manager, that was nearly the end of the band. But as it turned out, that forced us to make some changes, one of which was touring America for several months. That made us re-evaluate where we came from, and that became the basis of the next few albums, us thinking about England and Englishness, what we liked about it and what we didn’t like, repeat the characters and all of that. And that was the birth of Britpop, to some extent. Things that seem awful can go on to be the fulcrums around which everything turn.’

Party Time: Dave Rowntree unwinds after a busy day at the Blur coalface, back in the early days

Looking back at the Blur gigography, especially your earlier London dates, I see a few venues I was frequenting in the second half of the 1980s. We must have rubbed shoulders on a few occasions without realising. I’m thinking of places like the Cricketers, Kennington, venues in Kilburn, Tufnell Park, Camden, plus the Mean Fiddler, the Sir George Robey, the Borderline, the Marquee, the Powerhaus… In my case it was seeing bands I also felt should have made it but didn’t quite have that luck. And, of course, everyone has those tales of nights when the A&R men or a label or publisher takes a shine to another band on the bill rather than your own. So near, yet so far.

‘Yeah, at the time we were starting out, I heard one estimate that there were 100,000 bands in the country. It’s not like the cream necessarily rises to the top. As you say, there’s an awful lot of luck involved. You have to be at the right place at the right time. You have to work hard and make good music, but lots and lots of bands were working hard and making good music. None of this is guaranteed.’

Absolutely, and I get the impression you never took it for granted. And with regard to memories of those years, we tend to find within bands that someone will have a great memory of how it all came to pass, while another member is more likely to collect all those old hand bills, take those snaps, or whatever, and between you all, you pull it all back together. I’m guessing you fit into that latter box, out of the four of you.

‘Actually, we all have a box of junk where we threw all the… ephemera – I’d hate to call it memorabilia, because we’re still going! – as it went. I’ve certainly got a box of stuff, and I know Alex has, and Graham has a house full of stuff – he’s got every t-shirt he’s ever worn! So if you want to write a book on Graham’s fashion, you’re spoiled for choice! Damon’s got some stuff as well. But it was never, certainly in my case, kept with any particular idea of using it later on. It was more a case of, ‘When it’s all over, it’d be nice to remember this.’

That aside, it was music that got you over the line. And I get the impression that from the start – much as I love the inspirational punk ideal of taking things from scratch – you came from extremely musical backgrounds.

‘Yeah, certainly Graham, Damon and I were classically trained musicians, we could read music and had a kind of formal music training background. But really, the thing that saved us – because we made some terrible decisions along the way that could have finished the band – was playing live. We were then, and I hope still are, excellent live. So no matter how terribly everything else was going, we could turn up, play a gig, and everyone would go, ‘Oh yeah, that’s them. That’s what it’s all about.’

On that front, I also get the impression that while there was clearly underlying boredom between gigs, on the tour bus, you made the most of that down time, not least listening back to the night before’s performance, trying to work out what worked and what didn’t, what could be improved upon.

‘Yeah, I took that on, because we recorded the show every night, first of all for my own peace of mind, making sure what I was doing was okay. Then I started listening more widely, picking out things and mentioning stuff at soundchecks that we might try and change. That became my role. I don’t do that anymore, but we don’t have those three-day bus journeys with nothing to do now! This was pre-mobile phones, pre-CDs even. You’d have five or six cassettes, swap them around with everybody else, two or three books, and once you’ve gone through that, that was that – that was your entertainment gone, and you were desperately looking for things to do.’

Rollercoaster Ride: Dave Rowntree catches his bandmates in the Blur box seat, all those years ago

You were fairly well travelled before all that, by the sound of it, with regular trips to France, for instance.

‘I definitely wasn’t well travelled… But yes, I’d gone to live in France for a couple of years. That was a great thing to do, and I retain that abiding love of France.’

There’s a description in the book of a ‘a ginger hippie with a predilection for playing gigs in his pyjamas.’ Discuss.

‘Yep, that was how I joined the band! It didn’t last long, because that made me a bit of an outlier on the stage. But that’s what signed up to Blur – a ginger hippie in his pyjamas!’

What became of that chocolate brown Ford Cortina you drove that did its service up and down the A12, into the capital and back for rehearsals and shows.

‘I scrapped it. I took it down the scrapyard and got 25 quid for it. And I think they were ripped off.  I think it was worth half that.’

That’s a shame. I could see that at the heart of a Blur ephemera exhibition in years to come. Maybe we should lie, pretend it’s still out there, have a go at mocking up another one for that purpose. I won’t let on if you don’t.

‘Ha ha!’

You talk with some awe about that first rehearsal in Euston, and how you came together as a band that first time there. These are all important firsts, aren’t they?

‘Yeah, and that’s what the book is about, it turns out. I struggled for a long time to try and find out what it all meant, what I wanted to say with the book. And that was it, really – it was the firsts! It was that exciting time in the early days when the band was doing all these things for the first time. After a while, they became routine, but yeah – the first time in America, the first time in Japan, the first time in Canada, the first time in the studio with a proper producer… All these things felt like, and were to some extent, incredible milestones. And capturing that feeling of excitement and trepidation, that’s what I think the photos do, that’s what they show.’

Drum Major: Dave Rowntree, 20th century boy, holding on for tomorrow, but happy to look back

As someone who’s edited quite a few fans’ history books of popular acts, I always prefer those early day struggle tales over ‘biggest band in the world’ type antics in ‘enormodomes’. And there are only so many times you can read about VIP experiences in soulless stadia, as compared to first-night nerves in fleapit clubs or dodgy rehearsal rooms. Maybe I can just relate to that more, thinking perhaps it could have been me in that situation.

‘Yes, those years are the kind of missing years for most bands. By the time you’ve reached the public consciousness, you’ve already gone through that. It’s a growing process, usually. Not so in the case of boy bands, which is usually a downfall, but bands seem to arrive on the scene fully formed, with an image and something to say. But that’s taken years of trial and error, and it’s largely undocumented. That wasn’t the case for us as much, that we were evolving an image particularly, or a sound – that seemed to arrive fairly unbidden – but we were kind of figuring out what it was all about, who we were, what we wanted to sing about, all that kind of stuff. That was the thing that really kind of evolved over those first few years.’

Your purchase of a 35mm Olympus camera was timely, and you clearly have an eye for composition. There are many good images in the book. I guess it helps that you were part of a young band of annoyingly good-looking blokes, but it’s all pretty evocative and looks great.

‘Yeah, there’s something about film shooting on film, it makes things have a kind of classic feel that is completely missing with digital photography. You can superimpose film grain on it, but you haven’t solved any problems – you’ve just added some noise! Film grain isn’t actually noise at all. It’s something completely different, and all those defects with different kinds of film emulsions are actually what give it character now. You worked so hard in those days to get the kind of pristine photorealism you get with digital cameras, but we found when it arrived it’d taken the soul out of it and the struggle with the film was part of the art of it all. The chemistry is always part of the art. So we struggled in vain. When film cameras died and digital cameras took over, I lost interest, really.’

I had the pleasure this week of speaking to Dave Hill from Slade, and we got on to the subject of his band’s formative bonding moments in the Bahamas in the ’60s, down on their luck and paying off a huge debt in this seemingly ideal tropical setting, stuck in one room together. Similarly, The Beatles had their Hamburg years. How about Blur? I get the impression your greatest bonding moments came when you were travelling across North America on that tour bus, rethinking your direction after an earlier false start, Do you think that truly brought you together? You clearly had similar interests, with close cross-friendships between you, but you still had to learn to live with each other in close quarters and get on with each other. That’s quite a skill, really, isn’t it?

‘Yeah, that’s what splits most bands up. That and money. Having to live in each other’s pockets, seven days a week, 365 days a year. That’s what it was for decades, and that’s a very hard relationship to manage, no matter how much you like the people. But what I’ll come back to is that the thing that’s always saved us is the gigs. Whatever else is going on, when we go on stage and the first few notes of the first song are played, everything gets washed away and everything is renewed. Everything starts afresh.’

Back in the early days, the term the NME used – I’d read it from cover to cover in the ’80s – was ‘ligging’, and you seemed to do a right lot of that outside the nine to five recording existence. You clearly worked hard and were put through your paces by the likes of Stephen Street, but getting on to gig guestlists and all that – getting known and mixing with the right people – was all part of it. Did you see yourself as a party band? Or was it just letting the hair down after a busy day?

‘Erm… everybody was doing it. There were a bunch of us – all the current bands, all the current journalists, the young people in the record companies – we all went round together, all to the same things. Especially on a Thursday when it was Syndrome. But pretty much every night there’d be a good band on, so you’d ring round, figure out where we were going, and we’d turn up en masse and head for the bar. And the very journalists criticising bands for doing that were doing it themselves! Ha ha!’

Fan Fare: Damon taking newfound fame in his stride, on the first trip to Japan. Photo: Dave Rowntree

Were Food Records looking after you in that respect?

‘Yeah, we didn’t have any money, so weren’t partying that much, to be honest. You’d get a couple of drinks in, but hope there was somebody from the label to buy some drinks, or something through your publisher. You’d get a couple, then get one more or have enough money for the taxi home. It was pretty meagre times, to be honest. In the very early days we were living on five pounds a week each, relying on the generosity of the people we worked with, by and large.’

Incidentally, I lost touch with what became of keyboard player/vocalist Cara Tivey after her first spell with Billy Bragg (following her time with the Au Pairs, Fine Young Cannibals and Everything But the Girl). I either didn’t realise or forgot in the fog if time that she not only featured with you live during the Modern Life Is Rubbish and Parklife era, but also had an additional role as ‘the band mum for many years’, the one who ‘would make sure that people had presents on their birthdays and that restaurants had things that everybody could eat.’

‘Oh yes, she was a keyboard player for many years, she’d finished with Billy and was looking for a new adventure, and we were lucky enough to find her. She was great.’

You talk about a love affair with Japan from day one. And is Dave Mania, the fanzine put together by Japan’s toppermost Dave Rowntree fans, still in print, I wonder?

‘I think the Dave Maniacs are probably grandmothers now. They’ve probably got other things going on, and have certainly got their own families to worry about! But we still have a great reception in Japan. It’s still a fantastic place for us to play. And I hope all the Dave Maniacs are still involved!’

And what have you got planned for 2026? Will you be returning to politics in these troubled times – with the fascists at the gate – or are you channelling your energy into other projects?

‘My main job when I’m not doing Blur is writing and composing scores for films and TV shows. And the book promo tour will continue to next summer, probably. Politics-wise, we’ll just have to see. I’m an activist rather than a politician, and local elections are coming up in May. I’m not holding my breath, but I’ll get out there, knock on some doors, see what I can do.’

Will that be in the South-East then, or where you previously stood in East Anglia?

‘I left East Anglia about 10 years ago. I’ve lived in London most of my adult life anyway. I come from Colchester and I’ve lived around there and in Norwich and up by Cromer, but continue to live in distance of London for my film career.’

As a former Guildford lad who went to live in the North-West for three decades before heading to West Cornwall, I’m acutely aware of how people on the same wavelength in our towns and smaller cities are drawn together in such places – by music, the arts, whatever. I guess that was the case in your friendship with Graham and later Damon back in the day, in a town where you’d tend to get to know most of those on that same provincial scene.

‘Yep, in small towns everyone plays in bands with everyone else, the music community was a small one, and we knew each other very well. Bizarrely, I’d never met Damon, but pretty much everybody else.’

Until he stood you up in that pub when you were courting him as a singer for your previous band, yeah?

Young Dave: Blur’s ever-present beat man, Dave Rowntree, unwinding, back in the early days

‘He did! Anyway, it ended well! Ha ha!’

On the subject of suburban bands making it big, in my old manor I had The Jam, The Stranglers, then The Vapors on my patch to inspire, making me realise you could make it big from that patch after all. Who inspired this young percussionist with ambition on his own patch, when you were contemplating that move to the capital?

‘There weren’t that many celebrated people from Colchester. Sade had made it big, but… Colchester was one of those towns a bit too close to London. So if you have ambition, you probably go to London. A musical brain-drain, unfortunately.’

Finally, at the back end of 1990 – 35 years ago – there was the ‘She’s So High’ tour for the second single from the second LP. Was the belief firm at that point? Did you see the chart position you attained as a step-up, or did you consider yourselves still at the last saloon? As it turned out, the next single, ‘There’s No Other Way’, fared better, but I wonder how you felt, career-wise, before.

‘We were still, at that point and still are now, incredibly motivated, incredibly ambitious, but as I say, it was by no means guaranteed that anything was going to happen, and we were under no illusions that there was a mountain to climb, and we could fall off at any time.

‘I very much wanted the band to be successful and I certainly had ambition, but it would be an exaggeration to say I was sure it was going to be. I knew it was going to be difficult.’

American First: The bus Kenny used to transport the band across America after their first Atlantic crossing

No One You Know: Dave Rowntree’s Early Blur Photos by Dave Rowntree is out now, published by Hero and available from all good booksellers or online, with a few tickets still available for Dave’s appearance at Waterstones, Middle Street, Yeovil, at 4pm this Sunday, 23rd November, with further details via this link. You can also find out more about Dave’s interviewer, Jane Duffus, who has seven published books behind her, via her website here.

And while we’re plugging great reads, Malcolm Wyatt’s Solid Bond In Your Heart: A People’s History of The Jam (Spenwood Books, 2025), his follow-up to 2023’s Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade for the same publisher, is available from Burning Shed. You can also order signed /personalised copies via the author himself, with both titles £25 plus p&p. Malcolm is also the author of 2018’s This Day in Music’s Guide to The Clash, with a handful of copies still available direct from the author.

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Praise if you wanna – talking Paul Weller with Dan Jennings

Posted on October 24, 2025 by writewyattuk

It’s been a vintage year for Paul Weller-related publications, and I can’t believe eight months have now passed since the release of my own love letter in print to Paul, Bruce Foxton and much-missed Rick Buckler, Solid Bond In Your Heart: A People’s History of The Jam (Spenwood Books).

With the (whisper it) Christmas market in mind, I should mention that there are still a few hardback copies available, and if you’re looking for further Weller-flavoured written product, if only to drop a couple of timely hints to loved ones, there are a few more impressive new books to be tracked down.

This week alone saw a copy of the heavily soulful, super-ambitious Sartorial 65: Paul Weller Style – Five Decades of Cool land at West Cornwall’s WriteWyattUK HQ, a true contender for the crème de la crème of coffee table books, lovingly assembled by Nick Keen alongside daughter Harriet, Alf Button and Jason Disley. And that weighty wonder, seemingly right out of Cafe Bleu or maybe Our Favourite Shop next door, arrived shortly after further word from Stuart Deabill, co-author (with Ian Snowball) of 2012’s Thick As Thieves: Personal Situations with The Jam and 2020’s Soul Deep: Adventures with The Style Council, regarding In the Shadow of the Sun: Paul Weller & the Nineties, penned with Steve Rowland (also involved with Soul Deep) and Paul’s sister, Nicky Weller, currently on pre-release and set to land in Spring 2026.

While it might appear odd for this scribe to help spread the word about rivals of sorts in an era where spare cash is somewhat hard to come by, what unifies us all is an overriding love for Weller’s many musical projects and vehicles down the years, from The Jam onwards. And I feel it would be churlish to do anything but highlight those publications and another receiving plenty of rightful acclaim lately, Dan Jennings’ rather splendid Paul Weller: Dancing Through the Fire – the Authorised Oral History.

As Weller himself put it, ‘Nearly 50 years in music? How is that possible? When Dan mentioned that he’d interviewed over 250 people for this, I didn’t even know that I knew that many people… but he’s done it in a way that shows that it’s more than just about me, it’s the story of everyone who was there along the way.’

I’m guessing Dan’s still glowing about that praise. I know how he feels too, after receiving my own personal correspondence with Paul earlier this year following Solid Bond’s publication. I still gaze at that hand-written letter occasionally, smiling, somewhat in awe. ‘Paul Weller? Writing to me?’ Yes, really.

From day one – in his case, December 2020 – I loved the concept of Dan’s Desperately Seeking Paul podcast, and while I tried to avoid listening to more than a handful of editions while working on Solid Bond (not least as many of the names interviewed were also in my contacts book), I can safely say it made for wonderful listening, his lockdown era project soon soaring in the ratings, with good reason.

Chances are you’ll already know the idea behind the Paul Weller Fan Podcast, but in short it featured 180 in-depth interviews which ultimately led to a two-hour conversation with Weller himself, and even Dan’s involvement in Paul’s official marketing. The initial premise? Dan tells us he gave up his radio broadcasting career with ‘one big regret – never getting to interview his hero’, Desperately Seeking Paul created chiefly to try solving that issue, soon becoming a celebration of Weller’s output from The Jam’s In the City onwards, the broadcaster ‘joined by fans, musicians, band members who have played with Paul or simply loved and been influenced by his music, the studio teams, producers, engineers, tea-boys and more, the video directors and documentary makers, the journalists, radio and TV presenters, photographers and authors who have interviewed him, taken photos of him, written about him, hung out with him or who simply dug his career, friends, family… and more!’

Dan hardly needs my words of approval, the product speaking for itself and word put around by many influential commentators in Weller World and across the music press in recent weeks, with backing from his team at Constable / Little, Brown. And he deserves the accolades – it’s a mighty tome, lovingly licked into shape, coming in at 760-plus pages, taking us right through that amazing career, featuring many entertaining behind-the-scene tales, insights and perspectives from the man himself and those who have proved integral to that remarkable journey, including many names within Paul’s inner circle, family and friends among them, the accounts carefully weaved together from more than 200 hours of conversation… with PW’s blessing and full cooperation, all tackled remarkably well, much that worked about the podcast now neatly translated into written form.

And I know just how much hard graft goes into such publications and how much of your life and that of those around you (it took a look and drowned us, you could say) is consumed in the process. So how best for me to cover all that? Well, I decided to have words with Dan, who was good enough to spare a little precious time the afternoon after his London book launch – presided over by esteemed broadcaster John Wilson – between various engagements with radio shows and the like, part of a busy fortnight of promotion for a fella admittedly rather shell-shocked by the public and critical response to his book and broadcasts. He was definitely on a high. Most likely he still is.

‘I said to somebody at the launch, it feels a bit like a weird kind of out-of-body experience. There are moments where you see something, somebody’s written something lovely or whatever, and you get a bit emotional, but it’s like it’s happening to somebody else. Very odd.’

Can we measure success by the comfiness of sofas on stage at a launch event?

‘Ha! I mean, they were quality sofas, true… but also by the guests. The fact John Wilson came along, then introduced me, was utterly ludicrous. Someone I’ve listened to on the radio for donkeys’ years.’

And he turned down another event to be there.

‘He was meant to be at the Bowie launch at the V&A. I think he got his nights confused, then realised he’d double-booked. Bless him, I’d have binned off me for Bowie!’

Quite a compliment. John comes over as a consummate pro. In fact, I’ve only recently caught up with his Mastertapes series via the wonders of BBC Sounds – Billy Bragg, Ray Davies, Wilko Johnson, The Zombies, so many more greats in conversation, including Paul Weller around the time of Sonik Kicks and the 30th anniversary of final Jam studio outing, The Gift.

‘Yes, and on that he plays ‘Gravity’, still six years away from being released.’

It’s coming up for two years since Desperately Seeking Paul podcast interview no. 180. Clearly, that chat with the man himself was always the game plan, but did you – five or six episodes in – always believe or allow yourself to think it was going to happen?

‘It was a bit of a rollercoaster if I’m completely honest. There were times where I thought maybe it would happen, but then you heard things where people would say, ‘Oh no, he doesn’t do that sort of thing.

Dan Dancing: The DJ behind the book, a proud moment for this broadcaster and Weller enthusiast

‘But bless Claire Moon, his manager, who quite early on heard about it, and we connected. She said, ‘Look, you know…’ Obviously, if I interviewed Paul, it would be the end of a story arc, and kills off the ending. But she was also like, ‘Let me know if you want me to have a chat with him about it.’ It wasn’t a case of ‘let me know when you want him to do it.’ It was never a given, and certainly five episodes in I wasn’t thinking ‘this is going to happen’. That seemed a ludicrous idea, really.’

I wonder if your opinion of Paul as an interviewee changed. As an avid NME reader in the Eighties who first saw interviews in print with him in late Seventies Smash Hits days, the thought of landing a proper chat with him initially scared me. I wanted to do it, but – be it down to shyness or whatever – he’d often come over as brusque, surly, rather challenging. He seems remarkably chilled by comparison these days… but maybe that was always the case if you knew your stuff and he could recognise a kindred spirit. Perhaps it was just a perceived public persona.

‘I think as a young man he couldn’t always articulate what he wanted to say, therefore came across a bit abrupt, a bit short. I think there were also times when you could tell the interviewer was asking questions he didn’t have a huge amount of time for. He didn’t seem to get asked about the art and the craft, which surprised me. And without wishing to slag off other presenters, it was always one of my frustrations as a fan – he’d be billed on radio shows, you’d listen in… and some were excellent, but others you’d hear and go, ‘Why was he on that show?’ Like he was having to just tick off a press rota. Terrible. So absolutely, I think he’s in a place where he’s more comfortable in his own skin and as an interviewee now, but also think it’s about asking the right questions. That sounds like a massive ego, but there is that as well.’

It does make a difference. I can think of many an interview I’ve done where I feel a need to get in the sort of questions early doors that suggest you do actually know what you’re on about and understand where an interviewee’s coming from.

‘Yeah, you have to do your groundwork, and sometimes he’s been interviewed by people who clearly didn’t know, properly, his back catalogue or would try to find an angle that would be ‘clickbaity’. And Paul said quite recently to Shindig! ‘Dan didn’t have any agenda.’ I’m genuinely interested in all the stories and craft, his upbringing and everything as a fan but also as somebody interested in interesting stories!’

What do you reckon was your first ‘pinch me’ moment on this 180-edition journey?

‘Nicky Weller was a real key point, obviously in his inner circle as his sister. We did it on Zoom and she was in Ripley at her mum’s house, Ann chipping in in the background. That felt like a kind of Weller stamp of approval, The Jam fan club link, all that. And people like Andy Lewis, where you were getting to band members as well as writers, documentary, film makers, whatever, to the kind of people who had been ‘in it’, on the road…’

The upper echelons of the Wellerati.

‘Absolutely!’

Before all this there was a radio career. Tell me more, and why it ended.

‘That was my first love. As a kid, all I ever did, really, was listen to music and the radio. This was in Essex, I was born in ’75, so this would have been early Eighties. Me and my mum would listen to this guy, Timbo, who’d do really interesting, fun content and music competitions, and we’d play along. I loved music and grew up in a household where we had a cartridge machine. My folks had these massive, bloody great big cartridges of The Beatles and things in the house. We also had them in the car, taking these huge cartridges out with us! They’d flip over and somehow in the internal mechanism they’d always get tangled up. I’d love to see those again.’

So you were the Eight Track Cartridge Family, right?

 ‘Ha! Yeah, my mum was into Motown, The Beatles, all that, my dad was into Bowie, Eurythmics, Kate Bush… some great music. But funnily enough, not The Jam. They were just a bit past that age group. I’d listen to two shows, Invicta Radio on a crackling transistor… I’d struggle to get to school the next morning because I’d been listening in all night long, a guy called Caesar the Boogieman, brilliant. Then I discovered GLR and Chris Evans, before TFI Friday, Big Breakfast, all that. This was just so bonkers and anarchic and wonderful. I thought, ‘I want to do that job!’

‘I did hospital radio at 15, in Taunton. By then my folks had split, me, my mum and brother moving down to West Somerset. I had to go around the wards, get requests, take them to the presenters. Then, when I was 16, I got my own show, the Sunday Roast Show. By then I was doing a communications GCSE in sixth form alongside A levels and got a work experience place at BBC Somerset. I’d go in every Wednesday, but also spent time in the studio whenever I could. I’d fuck around with reel-to-reel tapes, make my own jingles for my hospital radio show.

‘I’d spend ages making little Dan Jennings effects tapes, all that. Such fun, and I made loads of friends through it. There was a Saturday show – I’d go in and answer the phones for this guy called Simon White. He was great, embracing young talent who were really keen. He had this ‘crew’, us all answering the phones for him, and he’d get us on air and out in the radio car, reporting back from events.

‘I then got offered a job by the BBC when they were moving to computers. This sounds so ancient – they were moving away from reel-to-reel tape, and I was the only one who really knew how they worked! They gave me a job, and I moved to BBC Bristol, and from there trained me to be a journalist and producer. I was there about eight years, left to do commercial radio in 2000, breakfast shows in Somerset, then Crawley, and a drivetime show at 210 Reading – a great show, a huge privilege, a big old station, but the format was more music, less talk, and heavily playlisted – not so much songs I liked.

‘I did a link one day, in the show notes it said, ‘Speed link, 10 seconds.’ I did 13 seconds. The programme director said, ‘It’s too long. Why?’ I thought, ‘I can’t do this anymore. This is rubbish.’ It wasn’t what I thought radio should be. I fell out of love with it, left and worked behind the scenes. I was at Magic and Absolute quite a long time – branded content.’

Where were you at come the Covid lockdown at the start of the Desperately Seeking Paul podcast?

‘That previous year I left an amazing job at Bauer, with some great people, having been there nearly 10 years. It felt like it was time to move on, so I moved to an advertising agency, a mixture of project management and production, running content partnerships but lots of interesting things, like voice skills for Couch to 5K, and Alexa, all these weird and brilliant projects, away from radio completely. That was where that ‘deep regret’ thing came from.’

As for that regret – never having interviewed his hero – when did this love for Paul Weller’s music come about?

‘It was his solo material, so I feel a bit of a fraud in that my discovery was not through The Jam or The Style Council. At the launch, John Wilson did a lyrics quiz, including proper ‘ingrained in everybody’s heads’ Jam lyrics, and I was terrible – didn’t know any! But I love those songs, and when I’m in the mosh-pit singing back at Weller, on a lot of songs I’m singing my own lyrics to them. Then again, even Noel Gallagher’s said the same!

Paul’s Blessing: Paul Weller was supportive of Dan Jennings’ project from the very Start of the venture

‘My discovery was through ‘Uh Huh, Oh Yeah’. Pretty sure it was Top of the Pops, with Weller, Whitey, Jacko Peake, Camelle Hinds. They looked brilliant. It was a weird thing, Top of the Pops, so random, not like a flow of a TV show in the same way Later would be. You’d literally bounce from Mr Blobby to Peter Andre, then Paul Weller, and his performance really stuck out.

‘Somebody I went to school with found my 16th birthday invitation party invitation the other day, I was DJ-ing, and the ad said I’d be playing music from KLF, The Shamen, C+C Music Factory… My tastes must have changed overnight, and as we led up to Britpop, guitar music came back, so you’d have Nirvana, Lemonheads, then I was getting into Juliana Hatfield…

‘I thought I’d discovered this brand-new artist, because he wasn’t very old – 35 or so – but had this amazing sharp Mod haircut and looked great, stick-thin, and so cool in these white jeans. I went into sixth form raving about this ‘new’ artist, telling everybody about this song. And when that first album came out, I was raving about it. Then we had builders in at mum’s, decorating or something. I brought home this massive cardboard Weller from, HMV, which, funnily enough, I’ve got in this garden office I’m chatting to you from. He’s got a Lennon copy thing going on, wearing these cool sunglasses, piano keys reflected in them. I was raving about him, and these fellas are like, ‘Yeah, mate, we’ve heard of Paul Weller. Check out his good stuff – The Jam.’

The next day they brought in this cassette. I think it was Snap, all these great hits but also loads of really great B-sides. I felt an absolute idiot. Later, I also found out about The Style Council, so there was all this catalogue to discover!’

At this point, I mention how I stepped away from Weller’s output after The Style Council’s The Cost of Loving, (an LP I like again now) but got back on board from The Paul Weller Movement onwards. I also mention how through writing, compiling and editing Solid Bond In Your Heart: A People’s History of The Jam, I’m reminded that a fair few Jam fans never embraced anything in his song catalogue beyond 1982’s The Gift.

‘I think that’s fascinating, and it’s not massively uncommon that people have this period where the music they find has that power. I’ve got so many friends who have that five-year or so period locked in time.

‘There’s the music, but the other thing I really like, when you start to understand that story, is the interviewing – getting people on to talk to me. I always loved meaty interviews. That was always a passion. I wasn’t a pop and prattle DJ, and that story arc is great – these kids playing clubs in Woking, the singer’s dad as manager, and all that followed, then the split, people being furious – some remaining so – and then The Style Council. This constant rollercoaster of storytelling that goes with it.

‘With the podcast and the book, I didn’t want to get into a battle with them – that’s their opinion and they’re entitled to it, it’s their truth. What I’ve tried to do through the podcast is – assuming they listen, because obviously it’s not just a Jam podcast – ‘Yeah, you might think that… but why don’t you listen to this?’’

Looking back on your book launch, do your boys – along on the night – now realise how much of a thrill this has been for you? Or was that never in doubt?

‘Yeah, my wife as well, they’ve all been so proud of what I’ve done. When I did the Ann Weller piece, somebody made me a photo frame of a gold disc, and my wife got a ‘100 episodes and counting’ celebration placard made. Then, when I reached (edition) 180, the day that went out on air they got champagne, a cake, and all that. They’ve always been supportive… even though it must be hugely annoying that every time we get in the car, Weller’s playing, or when they walk in a room he’s playing on the Smart speaker… even though they’re not fans of the music. I don’t know why…’

Boys’ Own: Dan Jennings and his lads, extremely proud of their Dad and his writing and broadcast ventures

Give it 10 years. They’ll eventually get it.

‘Yeah, but they’re hugely proud. And now the book is this physical thing they can see… This morning they both took a copy into school, we had cake and champagne for breakfast, and our youngest has decided he’s going to World Book Day in March as me! I suggested instead he goes as Weller, but he wants to go as me.’

That’s fantastic. And three book titles in, I should add that sense of wonder rarely loses its sheen. And in my case, my girls insist on ‘buns for tea’ on publication day, as with the mother in E. Nesbit’s The Railway Children when she sold stories.

‘Ha! And before John Wilson started the event, I said, ‘First things first – every time there’s a swear word on stage, my kids will get a pound.’ If Kenny Wheeler and John Weller, bless them, had been on stage, my kids would have paid off that mortgage! I knew it’d be fruity, but by the end it got to the point where my eldest, Henry, cheered every time there was a swear word… they’re both about £50 better off now and can afford a Switch 2, so they’re delighted.’

At this point, we compared notes on Weller-related writing projects and got on to the subject of both books serving as timely tributes to Rick Buckler and Ann Weller.

‘In the acknowledgements, I said there were three people who passed away during the making of the book – Rick, that was a real shock, but also Chalky, Suggs’ best mate (Andy Chalk), who wrote the words to ‘Nothing’ (as featured on 66). Then of course, Ann Weller passed away the midweek before we hit send to the publisher. I’d already written about Ann and how grateful I was, but tweaked that a little. Yeah, you realise the fragility, people getting older, and some of these voices you capture that then aren’t around. So actually I’ve captured Ann in this book, and she’s not here, bless her, to tell those stories again. That’s quite a wake-up.’

You mention your lads hearing Paul’s music wherever they go. What’s the most recent Weller-related record on the deck at home or in the car?

‘I’ve been listening to the covers album (Find El Dorado), but also the Will of the People boxset. For the launch, I did a playlist – it’s funny how long you end up taking on that, as if anybody’s going to be paying attention to the background music in the bar! – and there are so many brilliant tracks on that. There are so many brilliant songs on that. I don’t know why I didn’t listen to it a huge amount at the time – maybe just because there was so much Weller stuff out around then.

‘Things like ‘Serafina’ and ‘Devotion’, a bonus track on Sonic Kicks that was on a TV show about football, and things from the Jawbone soundtrack, ‘Into the Sea’, a bonus track on Fat Pop, which is beautiful, and a demo called ‘Let Me In’, which Ollie Murs covered. I don’t know why Paul didn’t release it – it’s a brilliant song. And ‘Praise If You Wanna’, about a minute and half long, and the ‘Mother Ethiopia’ stuff. It’s really diverse, all over the place, but a really good boxset.’

And when you’re off to your next event, what’s in the car?

‘There are a couple of albums I always go back to – the Wild Wood album is phenomenal. I do listen to other stuff, I promise! But when I go back to that, it brings back so many memories. Doing work experience at BBC Somerset, they had a record library full of promo CDs from the record companies. Bizarre, really – this was like BBC local radio broadcasting to pensioners! But I remember, clear as day, going in and on this pile of CDs – you could take what you wanted – they had ‘Sunflower’ two or three weeks before it came out. I remember driving from West Somerset to Taunton in a Vauxhall Astra estate my mum gave me, listening to that CD over and over. Then when that album came out, again getting a copy through the record library. Such a brilliant album, and it still sounds so fresh.’

Such a great run of LPs, those first three solo LPs incredibly important to me too, as was – in its own way – 22 Dreams, and on from there, several others making a huge impression.

‘Yeah, and I bounce around between them all. I listen to lots. On Sunset and Fat Pop as well – absolute bangers.’

And where’s home these days?

‘South-West London. I moved to London in 2009 when I got a job at Magic and Q Radio. That was exciting… then the week I started, they closed Q Radio down! I lived in Balham for a while, but couldn’t afford to buy there, so we moved out to Carshalton.’

I know it fairly well, being Guildford born and bred.

‘Ah, I was at Eagle Radio there for ages!’

Well, there you go, I was on work experience as a sixth former, mid-Eighties, in its days by the Friary shopping centre and the bus station, County Sound Radio, going on to help out that summer on an evening show for Dave Fitzgerald, more recently on BBC Radio Devon, once – I seem to recall – the voice of ITV West Country legend Gus Honeybun.

‘Ha! I remember Gus Honeybun! At Eagle Radio, Dave Johns was running County Sound, and Peter Gordon was there, another massive Weller fan featured on the podcast. I lived in Cranleigh and worked in Guilford. I did marketing, and used to be the Fuel Phantom. We’d go out, pay for people’s petrol on forecourts, which was hilarious. I had a kind of Zorro mask. There was also a mascot, so I had this bloody great bird costume, dressing up as an eagle, going to ice hockey.’

Guildford Flames?

‘Yeah! Ha!’

You’ve a quote from Mr Weller on the podcast website, saying, ‘I’m always looking forward to what I’m doing now and what’s ahead.’ So how about yourself?

‘Good question. I’ve been doing interviews with a bunch of BBC radio stations, and one person suggested there hadn’t been a decent documentary for donkey’s years, and obviously there’s a heap of content and voices and people there to mine… so that’s interesting.

‘And on BBC Radio Cornwall they said, ‘What about a Weller musical?’ I thought, ‘Oh, wow!’ I need to ask Weller HQ – they must have been asked, when you think about all these jukebox musicals lately.’

Well, bearing in mind there’s just been a Wedding Present musical…’

‘Oh really? And there were Tina Turner and Bob Marley ones, Bowie – the Lazarus thing… There are so many great songs, and then there’s the oral history. I don’t know. People could now steal that idea. I should at least message Claire!’

Sometimes you only need put these ideas out there…

‘That was the thing with the book. On ITV News, they said, ‘What’s next?’ and I said Paul Weller suggested, ‘Turn it into a book’. Then off the back of that, all these publishers were getting in touch. It was mad. But yeah, putting it out to the atmosphere… maybe not. I think my wife would be furious that I’m spending less time with the kids yet again!’

I reckon half of our acknowledgements in these books comprise apologies to better halves.

‘Well, someone at the launch went up to my wife and said, ‘Thank you very much for letting him do it.’! The thing is, I didn’t transcribe the podcast as I went along, so when it turned out we had this book deal, I had to start transcribing 200 episodes. Thankfully, loads of people came forward, started helping, bless ‘em, which was amazing. I don’t even know if it was a final book at that point, but knew I wanted to do that. What I did then was chop all the different little bits of stories up, like a big jigsaw puzzle, so I could put them in the right place… and I ended up with 1.5 million words!  

‘Gary Crowley mentioned to me the Mark Lewison book, The Beatles: Tune In…’

Ah, yes, still on my shelf waiting for a few quiet weeks to tackle. Looks bloody good though.

‘Yes! Well, Mark has a three-biography deal with my publisher, and part one only takes you up to 1963 or something. Somebody said last night, ‘You need to do an extended version.’ Well, technically speaking, I’ve done a 1.5-million-word version already!’

I seem to recall that’s the way I did my Clash biography. And you’ve reminded me that for many years I’d feel aggrieved at radio journalists in my sports reporting days, as once they’d finished a commentary and summary and maybe tracked down a manager and player, they could bugger off home, while I’d end up writing a second report, sometimes a third, that evening or the next day. So at least now you’ve seen it from both sides.

‘The thing is, though, something my book doesn’t do but maybe the original 1.5-million-word version does is truly capture that cultural aspect of The Jam you were talking about, and the power of all that – how everybody came together in that movement. the youth around that period feeling those bands connected everybody. If you were a teenager back then, that was the most important thing. You listened to the same charts, watched the same telly… and that’s never going to happen again.’

Similarly, I’ve edited lots of personal history music books, and always prefer the early days’ content most. For instance, first-hand accounts of Bruce Springsteen at the Stone Pony, Asbury Park, New Jersey, are far more interesting than countless tales of modern audiences queuing to see him after stadium soundchecks with the right wristband and VIP backstage passes. Nice a bloke as The Boss seems, that doesn’t make for such gripping reading.

‘Yeah, I understand that. It’s not the same as where people discover and experience music.’

And with that, he was away for his next call, still powering through, the praise (if you wanna) continuing, tackling it all with plenty of fire and skill, as you’d hope. Take a bow, Dan.

Dan Jennings features alongside Nicky Weller on day two – Saturday, 15 November – of the three-day Louder Than Words music literature festival in Manchester, the UK’s largest, the pair taking to the stage not long after Malcolm Wyatt and Louder Than Words writer/broadcaster Iain Key debate the continuing draw of The Jam and The Clash in a Battle of the Bands special refereed by Spenwood Books head honcho Richard Houghton. And both of those events are on a day when the LTW guests also include (deep breath) John Robb talking Oasis, Debsey Wykes, Stuart Maconie on The Beatles, Clare Grogan, Steve Diggle, James Nice on Factory Records, TV Smith, Justin Currie, Henry Normal, David Barbarossa, Dennis Bovell, The Lovely Eggs, Matt Johnson, Dave Rowntree, and Daniel Rachel. Quite a line-up, eh. For ticket details and more information, head to https://louderthanwordsfest.com/whats-on/

Malcolm Wyatt’s Solid Bond In Your Heart: A People’s History of The Jam (Spenwood Books, 2025) is available from the author, select book and record shops, various online sources, public libraries, and from Burning Shed via this link.

For more about Dan Jennings the Paul Weller Fan Podcast and Paul Weller: Dancing Through the Fire – the Authorised Oral History, head here.

To order a copy of the latest publication from Nick Keen, Alf Button, Jason Disley and Harriet Keen, head to the Sartorial 65: Paul Weller Style – Five Decades of Cool website.

And to pre-order In the Shadow of the Sun: Paul Weller & the Nineties, by Stuart Deabill, Nicky Weller and Steve Rowland, follow this Soul Deep Productions link.

Posted in Books Films, TV & Radio, Music | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Stone Foundation – The Cornish Bank, Falmouth

Posted on July 26, 2025 by writewyattuk
Galleon View: Stone Foundation in Falmouth, the Lone Groover in the wings. Photo: Malcolm Wyatt

Appearances by nationally renowned bands this side of the Tamar are few and far between, it seems, so need to be properly celebrated and savoured… hence my ride over to Falmouth last weekend to catch acclaimed soul collective Stone Foundation.

My previous visit to the Cornish Bank was for the town’s International Sea Shanty Festival, a different vibe but similarly joyous, a cracking venue on the main drag this time swapping maritime-themed deepwater festival folk for Midlands-bred deep soul and revival funk, the visitors supplying the sunshine vibes on a damp midsummer night.

Stone Foundation’s most recent long player, The Revival of Survival, has proved essential summer listening for this scribe in 2025, and while there was no appearance at Falmouth from Style Council co-founder Mick Talbot, a more recent addition to the ranks, we were in no way short-changed, keyboard player Ian Arnold proving more than capable of filling the gaps in that luscious sound. Besides, there are only so many band members you can fit on that stage. And while this A30 run proved too far out for their esteemed bandmate, Merton Mick will be on hand at Cardiff Castle on 20th and 21st August when they support Tom Jones, clearly still up for the big ’uns, 40 years beyond Live Aid. This was my third SF live outing since 2019, first catching them at Gorilla in Manchester, then two years later at the Boileroom, Guildford.

And I reckon this might even have been the best yet, the sound quality and choice of set making for a special night, a septet version of the band neatly set up by a soulful session from the Easylife Sound Association, taking to the stage while the DJ played atmospheric LP opener ‘How Many Times?’, the faders eased down as the band took over and swiftly got into the groove, moving on from there to the positive energy of title track – by way of a killer bassline – ‘The Revival of Survival’ then ‘Everything & All I Want’, seamlessly shifting up the gears, lighting up the West in this case.

And what presence, as Edwyn Collins would put it, a three-piece brass section – on paper, hamstrung by the absence of Dave Boraston – on form throughout, deputising debutante Patsy Gamble (perhaps it should be ‘pasty gamble’ in honour of the Duchy setting) putting down her mark, following the lead of horn arranger/ all-round dependable Steve Trigg (trumpet) and rapidly in step with fellow sax player, Anthony Gaylard, who was out of my eyeline behind the speakers but made himself known from those first blasted notes.

Parrot Fashion: Queuing outside the Cornish Bank, Falmouth, pre-set, on the night. Photo: Malcolm Wyatt

I do love a good brass section, fellow Midlands wonders Dexys’ first LP and (past SF collaborator) Graham Parker’s The Rumour brought to mind, with a little of the joyous energy of Earth, Wind and Fire and Stevie Wonder’s horn sections thrown in the mix for good measure.  

While the new LP formed the bulk of the set, there were selections from the previous four platters (all recorded at Paul Weller’s studio), starting with the upbeat, Andre Laville-less ‘The Light In Us’ from 2020’s Is Love Enough? And while the band were somewhat reliant on frontman/guitarist Neil Jones on the vocal front, he put in a great shift, band and audience alike floating on air for a Weller-free ‘Deeper Love’ and, later, clubland floor-filler ‘Reach Out’ (another delivered by Laville on record), keyboard wiz Arnie adding some lovely Ray Manzarek-like flourishes, the band building to a climax that was more Chicago House than Cornish Bank.

The laidback pop soul of ‘Fix You Up’ and ‘The Beat I Know’ from the new record also impressed live, Dominic Carr expertly taking on Phil Ford’s role on drums, the band totally in step, even if we didn’t have time to get our roller skates on, Jonesy remarking – looking in the direction of the balcony, where a fair few of us were hanging over – how he felt like he was playing on a galleon. In fact, his bass-playing co-conspirator, Neil Sheasby, felt it was more a mix of The Good Old Days and an audience in the Czech Republic. And while I’ve not been part of any such congregation, I kind of got where they were both coming from.

Wherever Stone Foundation play, the Style Council-like ode to joy that is ‘The Limit of a Man’ is always a highlight, with this night no exception, nine years after that song was first committed to vinyl on the Street Rituals album, the first SF LP to win me over… by which time they’d already put in a 17-year shift. And more than a quarter-century into their sonic journey, they continue to attract new followers… with good reason, new tracks like soulful dreamer ‘Close to Where You Are’ and the funkier ‘Cut Me Loose’ (Jonesy claiming JP Bimeni’s lead vocal here) proving they’re still capable of wearing grooves into dancefloors, the brass section working up a Pigbag-type sweat on the latter.

I reckon that would work as a theme for some retro 70s US cop show, and similarly, 2022’s ‘Stylin’ saw us back on that soul train, more Hill Street Superbad Blues than the band’s Tamworth and Atherstone foundations would suggest. At one point I was so locked in that I wasn’t surprised to catch sight of the Lone Groover (remember him from the NME, back in the day?) in the wings behind Ian Arnold, only to realise it was behatted co-founder/ever-present Sheas’ shadow.

We caught our breaths with the more spacy, slow-building old fave ‘Carry the News’, before a return to the latest release for ‘2 Die 4 U’, its naming convention suggesting a nod to Prince, that number fittingly followed by a Sly Stone tribute, Jonesy leading a chorus of ‘Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) before his chop guitar heralded a launch into mirror ball spinner ‘Heaven Knows Why’ from 2022’s Outside Looking In, more Studio 54 than 34 Church Street, complete with Shadows-like steps from the two Neils.

The main set ended with the rather apt ‘Now That You Want Me Back’, Melba Moore’s vocal taken on by the in crowd on another where Sheas’ pounding rhythmic bassline paved the way, our visitors then staying put rather than facing a trip back through the audience to find the dressing room, duly milking the applause before launching into a three-song encore, this sentimental fool rather emotional on hearing their no-nonsense rendition of current single, ‘Starting From Zero’, my highlight of the night and a contender for single of the year, those luscious horns adding to its Bowie-esque vibe.

There was still time for one last deep cut from the new record, ‘When Worlds Collide’, including plenty more sax appeal, Stone Foundation style, before a return to 2018’s Everybody, Anyone for ‘Next Time Around’, a perfect celebratory conclusion to a stonking 19-song set, this punter giving the only song from the new record not featured on the night, the dreamy ‘Summer Song’, a quick blast on the way home… the night going on and on and on. 

Floor Fillers: Stone Foundation on fine form at the Cornish Bank in Falmouth. Photo: Stone Foundation

Beyond their support with Tom Jones at Cardiff Castle next month, Stone Foundation are at Hemel Hempstead Old Town Hall on 13th September ahead of mainland European dates between 18th September in Basel, Switzerland, and 22nd September in Frankfurt, Germany, followed by dates across the Irish Sea on 26th September at Dublin’s Workman’s Club Cellar and 27th September at Belfast’s Oh Yeah Music Centre.They then set out for a run of UK dates, from The Bullingdon in Oxford on 23rd October through to 29th November at Shepherd’s Bush Empire in West London. For full details of all those dates and ticket links, head here.

For all the latest from Stone Foundation, including details of the band’s The Revival Of Survival acoustic session, featuring Neil Jones, Neil Sheasby, David Boraston and former Style Council pair Mick Talbot and Steve White, check out their website here and Facebook and Instagram pages.

And for more on Stone Foundation from these pages, check out these links for April 2017, October 2019, April 2022 and November 2023 feature/interviews with Neil Sheasby, and this September 2020 feature/interview with Neil Jones.

Posted in Books Films, TV & Radio, Music | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hello? Is that the second greatest songwriter this world will ever know? – in praise of Vinny Peculiar’s Things Too Long Left Unsaid

Posted on June 27, 2025 by writewyattuk
Worcester Calling: Alan Wilkes awaits WriteWyattUK’s verdict on the latest Shadrack & Duxbury Records LP

Has it really been a month since the official release of Vinny Peculiar’s latest long-playing work of art? Well, I never. And that’s rather spot on seeing as I had an advance copy long before that release date, but… ‘well, I never’ quite found the time to spread the word, until now. Still, there’s that old chestnut of an adage about the best things coming to those who wait… and it is rather apt that this belated review is for a record called Things Too Long Left Unsaid.

The LP, his 15th in total and out on his own Shadrack & Duxbury Records label, is described by Alan Wilkes, the talented singer-songwriter behind Vinny Peculiar, as ‘a retrospective collection of older, unreleased songs written over a ten-year period (2011 -2021) that never quite made it on to past albums,’ its 10 songs ‘re-made and re-imagined’ alongside Dave Draper (Dodgy, The Wildhearts), ‘recorded in an attic on Rainbow Hill, Worcester’ and at Mayfield Road Studios, Salford, and The Old Cider Press, Evesham (with its rather lovely LP artwork down to another long-term VP associate, Paul Cliff).

So without further ado (and there’s been a fair bit of positive ado about the record so far, from critics and fans alike), here’s my take on the latest batch of Wilkes-penned wonders, from ‘The End’ to the finish, so to speak.

This time, the main man (vocals, electric, acoustic, slide and bass guitar, piano, keys and drum programming) co-produces with Dave Draper (additional guitar, bass and drums, final edits), with backing vocals from Alan’s daughter Leah Wilkes and Seb Walch. And I’m still trying to work out if it’s genius that the reflective gem opening the record is called ‘The End’… not least as it could easily be a lighter-waving set finale.

‘Next time we’ll get it right, and we’ll hit the big time on a Saturday night.

But this is the end, this is the end, here’s to a new beginning,

Here’s to a brand-new innings, here’s to a new way of living.’

There’s a Richard Hawley-like quality here, and as for that song title, I wonder what Jim Morrison would make of it. And I don’t mean James Robert, of Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine fame… although there’s a modern-day solo artist ploughing similar well-observed, skilfully executed songwriting furrows… if that’s not too mixed a metaphor (it clearly is, on reflection).

Disc Space: WriteWyattUK’s Vinny Peculiar CD collection in all its glory. Photo: Malcolm Wyatt

Talking of Saturday night fervour (I know, from furrows to fervour in barely a couple of lines, pop kids!), there are elements of ‘Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting’ on ‘Shenstone College Disco’, my first contender for best song on the record. More accurately, it’s more a case of ‘Saturday Night’s Alright For Vinny’, and I reckon this glam rocker of a song would have fit rather seamlessly on 2023’s wonderful How I Learned To Love the Freaks LP.

On this occasion, our awkward hero gets off with an exotic arty type, the colourful detail in the words typically evocative and Vinny-esque.

‘And the girl, she slowly wakes up and says, ‘oh, I feel a bit rough,

There’s cat food in the pantry, you seem a little more alive than me.’

It comes with Pete Shelley-like delivery and Ray Davies-worthy storytelling, the listener transported back to days of yore when ‘Three Times a Lady’ inevitably vied for the last dance smooch spot and no discerning lover would have headed into the bedroom without protection – a copy of Astral Weeks on the stereo in this case.

There’s an almost-trademark VP twist in the tale too, and it’s one of those songs where I feel the need to ask its author, ‘Did that really happen?’ It certainly feels real. Perhaps we need Mr Wilkes as a regular panellist on a musicians’ version of Would I Lie to You? Perhaps I should pitch the idea to Zeppotron (which sounds like a line from a Vinny song, come to think of it).

And while Robert Forster memorably sang of Sydney musician and journalist Frank Brunetti in The Go-Betweens’ ‘Darlinghurst Nights’, Vinny namechecks US poet and painter Laurence Ferlinghetti with similar verve. As with a lot of his material there’s a little Pulp here too, and I love the way Vinny adds that grounded last line, ‘It’s in Bromsgrove’.

I mentioned a Reg Dwight rocker before, and soon the Pride of Pinner (he did do The Lion King soundtrack, after all) gets a mention in ‘Sentimental Music’, Vinny telling a Pulp-tastic tale of a woman who loves a bit of ‘guilty pleasure on the hi-fi, easy come and easy go…’

‘She loves sentimental music, listens to it all day long
She’s got Elton on the stereo, and he’s playing her song.’

Yes, we’re back at Nostalgia Central, listening for pleasure, with another killer hook… this song definitely one for the festival set. I could hear Coldplay or Snow Patrol belting this out at Glasto in late afternoon sunshine. And I shouldn’t imagine Vinny would be too upset by that prospect. It may help pay for a new extension at Peculiar Towers.

Then we have the absolute delight that is ‘Love at the Garden Centre’, featuring so many great lines, in a Brel-liant ditty where it seems we have Jarvis Cocker appropriating Leonard Cohen and Scott Walker.

‘She takes hold of his hand and says, ‘Beware the hemlock.’

If that was the only line that grabbed me, I’d have been sold, but again we have another great romance that we’re invested in from the start… big time.

‘At the garden centre early in the morning, ghosts in the greenhouse float above the seed trays.

Wendy’s at the sprinkler, watering and tending, seedlings in transition welcoming the sunshine of their love.’

How about that for painting a picture, eh? And that’s before we even reach the last track on side one, ‘All I Want For Xmas is a Gibson Flying V’, the only one I knew as I split the cellophane on this mighty disc.

For those who missed out last December, what we get here is a ‘time-travelled Vinny Peculiar Christmas song set in the hallowed era of the guitar hero; a 1970s teenage lament celebrating the rock ‘n’ roll allure of Gibson’s most iconic guitar, seen through the dreams of a starstruck schoolboy.’ A Christmas song added to an album released the following summer? Yes, maybe, but it works so well here, the time that has elapsed since my last airing adding a freshness, aided by Leah’s sweet backing vocal.

‘Noddy tops the hit parade but the girls all love Jim Lea,
I’ve a Levi’s denim jacket and I’ve just discovered Free’

He certainly gets away with including it. And while first time around it didn’t really get a chance to bother the charts, just be reminded that it took Wham!  37 years to top the UK charts with ‘Last Christmas’, so surely I can hold out hope that Vinny will finally get a festive hit with this gem. And that Glen Campbell-like guitar lick subtly woven within works so well here.

On to side two, track one, and we find ‘Fine Art’, my next contender for album highlight… in fact contender for album track of 2025, a good old-fashioned rocker in this case.

‘She studied for a fine art degree in a redbrick university, she said, ‘Oh wow, is that really me?’

I was working on a building site, I’d joined a band, we were doing alright, sessions on the local BBC.

She drew a picture of the Queen, naked in the bath for all to see – It’s hanging on my wall,

It remains a talking point when my friends come over to call.’

Is that Billy Gibbons I see stepping out of the wings to guest on this around the minute and a half mark, that Vinny Peculiar festival headline slot finally calling? And yet there it is, our dream bubble as good as popped by that telling last line, our hero clearly feeling out of his depth.

‘She was a well to do girl, same from a different world… I never stood a chance.’

This could have all gone a bit Crazy Horse in the end, and that would have been great. What we get instead though is… well, more cowbell… a whole load more cowbell. It must have been milking time as the band slowly (ahem) steered themselves away from that festival field. Lovely.

There’s a little more of that ol’ Smiths-like VP whimsy in the life-affirming ‘Songwriters of the World’, not least in the title itself, another perceptive song about, erm, songwriting. And Al’s penned a fair few of those down the years. Follow the link for details of his songwriting master classes… maybe.

‘Nailing the melody and honing the words.

Well, I think you really ought to know I’m the second greatest songwriter the world will ever know.’

As the man himself puts it, sometimes it seems, ‘All the good ideas have been used up,’ and yet he remains an optimist, grabbing inspiration where he can, adding, ‘But no one’s telling me a song can never change the world.’

I love a song where other acts get namechecks, and Mr Wilkes (I can’t write that without picturing Woolpack barman Amos Brearley and his boss… but that’s another story) has become rather adept at all that. I’ve said before The Grateful Dead seem to get a lot of mentions, and I may soon have to add fellow early AW influence Wishbone Ash to that. And where The Chesterfields pulled off namechecking so beautifully on 2022’s ‘Our Songbird Has Gone’ on the subject of indie royalty, it seems Vinny has taken another angle.

Paul Simon, David Bowie, Joni Mitchell and me,

Bill Nelson, Carole King, Paddy McAloon and me,

Ray Davies, David Byrne, Ian Hunter and me,

Roy Harper, Marc Bolan, Noddy, and Jimmy Lea!’ 

Wow, there you go, a second nod to the mighty Neville John Holder and James Whild Lea in the space of three songs (after ‘Gibson Flying V’). Respect.

I get the feeling that ‘Glam Rock Graveyard’ is another that could easily have slipped on to the Love Freaks LP. Perhaps it could still feature on the 10th anniversary deluxe edition in 2033. Or maybe it just slipped my mind that it was included on the B-side of ‘Hippie Kids’. Y’know, that one-off VP 12” on denim-coloured vinyl that came with a specially monogrammed phial of patchouli oil.

It’s the heaviest of the components here, the subject matter clearly fitting that concept, Alan looking on, wryly, at rock stars, politicos and what-have-you, delivering with the kind of ‘impassioned as I get’ fire Roddy Frame gave us on Aztec Camera’s ‘How It Is’. 

Home Comforts: Alan Wilkes, the driving force behind Vinny Peculiar, takes some precious time out

‘Freedom is a construct rarely achieved
Governments tell lies people are deceived
Artists fight back but nobody cares
And they sell out after a couple of years’

Then, conversely, we have ‘The Man Who Loved You’, and this one gets better and better with every listen, I’d say. It’s a shame the afore-mentioned Glen Campbell’s not around to cover it (having no doubt first heard Travis’ cover version, Fran Healey and co. taking this Peculiar ditty and doing their own thing on the reimagining front, ultimately landing their first top-five hit since 2001’s ‘Sing’. Or did I dream that as well?

Wistful is the word, the sun about to dip below the horizon, smiles on faces, the world somehow a far better place.

‘You can say hello to my goodbye song,

Like you saw it coming all day long, when I wrote it for you’ 

And then we’re away with ‘Fluffy Kitten’, sweeping David Bowie-like choruses over a Wolf Alice construct (the answer song to their own ‘Fluffy’, I’d suggest), for a rather chillingly perceptive number about the sad old world of social media, laid bare right there. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Viral Post, if you like, the dry ice clawing (rather apt, that) and choking at times.

‘Next day I posted video of a Dachshund in a waistcoat, behind the wheel of a toy car.,

And I’m sharing it with you now, hoping you do the same’

Fingers crossed everybody… fingers crossed this one goes properly insane.’

In a sense, he’s managed to lose the warmth of the previous number, but it’s a number to behold all the same, soundtracking the 21st century hyper (low on) reality cyber-world in a nutshell. Bravo, VP. Here’s to the next record… no pressure.

Alone Again: Alan Wilkes catches up on his reading while awaiting word from WriteWyattUK HQ

There are several past Vinny Peculiar-related feature-interviews and reviews on these pages, not least a Manchester Castle Hotel live review and WriteWyattUK lowdowns on the Love Freaks and Artists Only LPs, set around interviews with Alan Wilkes.

Things Too Long Left Unsaid is available in all digital formats and on CD and vinyl, with further details about the album and its predecessors, plus forthcoming live shows, via www.vinnypeculiar.com

Vinny adds, ‘I’ll be playing a few gigs in the coming months, some band shows and some solo/duo events, with full details on my gig page. If you’re thinking of coming along – and of course I’d really love you to – please book as early as possible. Every little helps. 
 
‘I also have new songs ready for a pre-Christmas release, an EP of extra-terrestrial lullabies, including the next single, ‘Katy Perry in Space’, a song that compares and contrasts the vanity of space tourism with, well, real life…’

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Love is here today – celebrating Brian Wilson, Sly Stone and the power of music’s family affairs

Posted on June 13, 2025 by writewyattuk

‘You’ve got to keep in mind love is here… today

And it’s gone… tomorrow, it’s here and gone so fast’

The night I heard about Brian Wilson’s exit, I felt a compulsion to head to my back room for a timely spin of Pet Sounds, wrapping myself in the warmth of that ground-breaking 1966 recording by way of a tribute.

News of his passing emerged two days after we learned of the departure of fellow 83-year-old innovative force Sylvester Stewart, best known by his stage name, Sly Stone. And I was reminded of a time I would regularly slip on my turntable Epic’s 1970 Sly and the Family Stone Greatest Hits or EMI’s 1976 Beach Boys compilation 20 Golden Greats (the one with a surfer riding the waves as its cover), both capable of putting a spring in my step before a night out.

Give or take a few of the better-known singles, my conversion to San Francisco Bay’s Sly and his rich song catalogue was retrospective, while properly discovering the deep joy of ’60s and ’70s soul and funk in the second half of the ’80s. And the Family Stone gathered all I loved about those classic Motown, Atlantic and Stax outfits and took it further… took it higher, actually, melding pop, soul, rock and funk, paving the way for George Clinton, Prince, and all that. Sly pulled together a string of great records between 1967 and 1974, his band initially including sister Rose and brother Freddy (‘You see, it’s in the blood…’). And as Dary Easlea put it in the sleeve notes for Sony’s 2011 22-track Dynamite! The Collection, ‘Here was black and white, male and female, with women not simply as singers or eye-candy but as bona fide musicians.’

We’re talking a call to dance here, alongside social commentary through music, echoing the main themes of that troubled era. Again quoting Daryl Easlea, they were ‘pleading for unity and peace at a time of anxiety in the US inner cities,’ their music ‘tinder-dry, funky and claustrophobic,’ led by an artist seen as ‘one of the greatest innovators of African American music’. Praise, indeed, and rightly so. That word influential gets used a lot, but if you’re unfamiliar with his full body of work and deeper cuts, I reckon the fact that a lot of it sounds familiar on a first listen but you can’t quite place why, show’s the inspirational reach of the fella, his spirit in so much great soul music we’ve heard since.

While I admit being late to the party for Sly (and what a party!), I can’t recall a time when the lads from Hawthorne, California with the super-close harmonies – another quality Family Affair – weren’t key components of my formative years’ soundtrack. Seemingly, there was no such mystery for me in the late-’80s about knowledge of the Beach Boys’ own track record… but again I had much still to immerse myself in to get the full picture. And that’s probably still the case.

By the time I made my home debut in late 1967, Brian Wilson’s troubled Smile project had been abandoned (yet thankfully completed later) then watered down and released as Smiley Smile, Capitol winning a battle to include sonic masterpiece ‘Good Vibrations’, 18 months after Brian first committed it to tape as part of the Pet Sounds sessions. He came back to that, big time, the classic track Beatles publicist Derek Taylor dubbed a ‘pocket symphony’ released as a single the previous autumn, the first Beach Boys 45 to top both the UK and US charts. And by the time I was an avid wireless listener in the early ’70s, that’s what that band were to me, a classic singles band receiving regular radio airplay, closely associated with summertime and fun, fun, fun.

It’s not in doubt that they produced one of the finest ever runs of pop singles, hitting the jackpot from ‘Surfin’ USA’ in early ’63 – when Brian was 20 – onwards, amassing two UK No.1s among 28 top 40 hits. The album stats are equally impressive – with two more No.1s from 34 top 40 hits since 1965, albeit with their chart-toppers rather inevitably hits compilations, including that ’76 ‘best of’, which spent an amazing 10 weeks at the top that summer, amid the height of the drought. No wonder we associate this band with high summer.

And those 45s were everywhere in my youth, mostly on BBC Radio 1 or Capital Radio, on the air in rural Surrey or during West Country and Isle of Wight breaks. In fact, I associate Brian’s arrangement of traditional Bahamian folk song ‘Sloop John B’ with a well-known pub by the harbour slipway in St Ives, Cornwall, The Sloop, and just a couple of streets back from there  Porthmeor Beach was where all those songs about surfing and beach life spoke to me… this boy happy watching waves break and surfers weave their way inshore, all those hits in mind.

As for ‘Help Me, Rhonda’, that was a nod to the Welsh valleys, right? I mean, The Byrds tackled Pete Seeger’s ‘The Bells of Rhymney’ around the same time. And ‘Barbara Ann’ surely carries the spirit of a cracking late night in the studio, like listening to the merry voices downstairs as a lad, not least after one too many sherries for the old ‘uns at Christmas. Great music makes the world a much smaller place.  

It would be a few years until I got anywhere near ‘California Girls’ (we didn’t even meet any when we camped near the north Norfolk coast in ’88, by which time I probably equated that song more with poodle-haired David Lee Roth’s rocky cover), but the Beach Boys were certainly there for me by the time of my first brief West Coast US visit in 1991, or more precisely a week or so later as the infectiously-upbeat coach driver-cum-tour guide driving a busload of us backpackers around New Zealand’s South Island treated us to surf classics on loop, from the moment we stepped back on board, the morning after the night before. I’d envisaged Split Enz, maybe even The Chills, but instead got ‘I Get Around’, ‘Little Deuce Coupe’, ‘Surfin’ Safari’’ and ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ at every turn, the international pull of Brian Wilson’s songcraft for all to hear.

That love was handed down to the next generation too. When my girls were young (but not so young that they didn’t see through the rather lazy adaptation that brought about ‘Little Saint Nick’, a festive season regular at our house), I’d smile as I put my head around the bedroom door to see them playing – in their own special way – with Barbie and Cindy dolls to a soundtrack of Wilson-penned classics… often with rather distinctive lyrical rewrites – more Central Lancs than US West Coast. I won’t even go into their take on ‘Do It Again’.

But it was Pet Sounds I needed to hear again this week, returning to that distinctive green, yellow and white framed cover, sort of Five Go Feeding at San Diego Zoo by George Jerman, an aural work of art there for me since that second half of the ‘80s. And while 20 Golden Greats was about the sound of summer, Pet Sounds added a melancholic, wistful air to that nostalgic framework, its sublime twists and turns making an increasing impression on me.

Competition between The Beatles and The Beach Boys at the time inspired both acts to greater and greater heights. And for Brian Wilson, it was the release of Rubber Soul – the US pressing, sans singles – that compelled him to head back into the studio, resulting in his finest album by far… and a contender for the best record of all time. I can’t truly remember the first time I listened all the way through, but I know it wasn’t a gamechanger for a while. Sure enough though, it soon worked its magic on me, perhaps making more sense to this teenager once I’d experience a little more life, love and loss.

As Brian put it in 1990, in the notes for that year’s remastered CD release, ‘ln December of 1965, I heard the album Rubber Soul by The Beatles. It was definitely a challenge for me. I saw that every cut was very artistically interesting and stimulating. I immediately went to work on the songs for Pet Sounds.’  You probably know the story from there, but I’ll cover some of that territory. In came advertising copywriter Tony Asher, the pair of them bouncing words, music and ideas off one another, Brian’s bandmates at that point touring, their creative bandleader having quit the road, enabling him to pour his efforts into his studio-based songcraft.

By January ’66, he was working on the first instrumental cuts, ‘each track a sound experience of its own’. He added, ‘I was obsessed with exploring, musically, how I felt inside.’ Twelve songs later, ‘totally exhausting some of my musical creativity,’ he shared those numbers with his bandmates, and ‘they all flipped,’ the true heart and soul nature of what he had created soon apparent.

With recording complete in April, the LP was released in May in the US ‘to a confused public,’ as biographer David Leaf put it. We seemed to get it on this side of the Atlantic though, and by early July it was on its way to a half-year stay in the UK top 10, peaking at No.2 (kept off the top by, yikes, The Sound of Music) in a 39-week top 40 stay. As with every musical genius, there was friction between the artist and the label, Capitol clearly not seeing its full potential. But Brian knew where it was at… and was ultimately proved right.

While it was the singles I knew first, much of the content and its themes initially passing me by, this ex-chorister understood harmonies, that amazing blend of voices between three brothers, a cousin and a high school friend recognised as something special. Clearly, technology had moved on by the time I was fully on board, but what they got down on tape that winter and spring in Hollywood was way ahead of its time. I guess Brian just wasn’t made for those times, the 23-year-old’s labours as chief writer, player, producer and all-round genius shining through. quickly finding his own innovative way.

This was no one-man band either. As he put it himself, ‘The boys filled out the album for me, and we had a classic on our hands.’ There’s an understatement if ever there was one, and the band’s input ran to much more than ensuring that wondrous vocal blend. This was an ensemble recording, for all Brian’s magic, its creator’s lead vocal duties augmented by those from Mike Love and Carl Wilson, the latter integral to ‘God Only Knows’.

There are certainly no fillers, Pet Sounds the epitome of the raised creative bar, as Paul McCartney quickly acknowledged, calling ‘God Only Knows’ the best song ever written, suggesting what he heard inspired his input for the Sgt Pepper’s LP that followed.

Brian’s own highlight was ‘Caroline, No’, but for me it could be so many of those songs. I think of that finale as the inspiration for many more frankly less dynamic songs heard on the radio in the ’70s, much of which I’d have seen as middle of the road fluff by the time punk and new wave had made an impression on me. But in his hands, it was anything but.

Looking at the credits and background info, I see that on ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ he went for take 21, while for ‘You Still Believe Me’ it was take 23, ‘God Only Knows’ was take 20, and ‘Here Today’ saw takes 11 and 20 stitched together for the master. That says something about the hard graft put in, to great effect.

I like more recent find ‘Trombone Dixie’ too, an instrumental borne out of his earlier recording sessions that would have been a highpoint for many a band of that era. But I’m not suggesting Brian should have snuck it on there. He got everything spot on. The same has to be said for ‘Good Vibrations’, cut in mid-February but a song he decided to leave for later. A great call.

There’s not much I can write here about Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys that hasn’t been heard a thousand times, but the sheer perfection of ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’, ‘God Only Knows’, and so much more… well. I don’t mind admitting a few tears as I played the latter the night I heard the news… not for the first time. And there they were again on ‘Here Today’ in that moment the backing is all stripped back and Mike Love comes in with the first, ‘Love is here…’

Challenging times were ahead beyond Pet Sounds, but as Brian said in those remaster notes, ‘When you make a great album, it is good for your confidence and it tells you that you can continue to record in that same spirit. I really fulfilled a dream with this album.’ He certainly did that, for us too as it turned out. And maybe that was also Sly Stone’s message in the Family Stone’s Sixties sign-off of sorts, ‘Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)’, a song I first knew best from Magazine’s wondrous Martin Hannett-produced cover version.

Time to head off and play that again, I reckon, maybe with a side-serving of that year’s ‘Everyday People’ (cited within, of course) and 1971’s ‘Family Affair’. Then tomorrow, perhaps I’ll return to the wonderful Dance to the Music LP. After all, every now and again we all need a little ‘Dance to the Medley’, right? Inspirational. Thank you, Sly.

And to finish back at Brian Wilson’s door, the man who created The Beach Boys’ 1966 masterpiece signed off those 1990 remaster sleeve notes with, ‘This album is personally from me to you.’ And Pet Sounds truly is the gift that keeps giving. Thank you, Brian.

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