Month: May 2021

Entry #203 in the Dylan to English Dictionary, billed by author A.J. Weberman as “the most useful and authoritative translation of Bob Dylan’s poetry you can own,” provides the Dylanological definition of garbage as: “Empty talk, vacuousness, inferior work produced by other artists.” And Weberman, who lays claim to coining the word Dylanology, knows garbage. In the early 1970s, he was infamous for sifting through the trash cans outside Bob Dylan’s Greenwich Village apartment. Weberman was rummaging for clues, angling to unlock the mysteries of his idol: discarded song lyrics, intimate letters, something. What he mostly excavated, according to a 1971 Rolling Stone profile, amounted to “a mound of dog crap and a mountain of odoriferous, soiled disposable diapers.”Like many in the early 1970s, Weberman saw his hero as an apostate, who had forsaken his role as the voice of a generation. He engaged Dylan with open hostility, lurking outside his house and drawing him into a series of belligerent (and highly entertaining) phone calls. Weberman subjected Dylan’s lyrics to microscopic close readings and played his records backward to reveal hidden meanings. Weberman’s Dylan to English Dictionary is a similarly demented project: the result of ingesting every word of Dylan’s songs into an early computer using punch cards, to find a way into those famously impenetrable lyrics. The results may be wholly cockamamie. But the undertaking itself illuminates so much of Dylanology, a discipline animated by the shared belief that Dylan needs to be deciphered. The mission of the Dylanologist is to serve as codebreaker, or some augur of the divine.If Weberman was written off as an unhinged oddity in the ’70s, he’s an absolute pariah now. He has spent decades propagating phony theories that Dylan has AIDS (contracted from a dirty heroin needle) and, more recently, that Bob Dylan has died, a casualty of the coronavirus pandemic. Yet the discipline he invented lives on and is now serious business. There’s no mention of the disgraced dean of Dylanology in The Double Life of Bob Dylan: A Restless, Hungry Feeling (1941–1966), the first volume of a new biography by Clinton Heylin, whose own body of Dylanological research numbers eight books, including the thrice-revised biography Behind the Shades and a multipart analysis of each of Dylan’s 600-plus songs. Weberman’s Dylanological preeminence can, by now, be safely disavowed.Certainly, Heylin sets out to elbow past all other comers, making bullying attempts to clear the crowded field of Dylan researchers, biographers, and armchair obsessives. Ian Bell’s Dylan biographies are “pseudo-historical.” An introduction to a book of Dylan photographs written by august rock journalist Dave Marsh is “insipid.” Longtime confidant Victor Mayamudes’s Another Side of Bob Dylan is “thin gruel.” The online resource About Bob Dylan proves only “ostensibly reliable.” Dylan’s own 2004 memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, is “unreliable,” something that even rookie readers took for granted at the time of publication. Readers are meant to be humbled before such pomposities. Here comes Clinton Heylin to hew a path through the trash heap of vacuous biographies and inferior works. Something is happening here, and this guy—and only this guy—knows what it is.Heylin’s book arrives at an opportune time. Bob Dylan turned 80 this week. Last year’s Rough and Rowdy Ways album received the sort of universal critical acclaim that has eluded Dylan in recent decades: a welcome (and frankly relieving) reminder that his genius could still find purchase as he entered his ninth decade. He also made headlines for striking a blockbuster deal with Universal Music, which purchased Dylan’s robust back catalog for an undisclosed sum (rumored at about $300 million). Between such big-ticket accounting, and the recent work’s mournful, in places downright funereal tone, it’s hard not to be reminded that Bob Dylan will not be here much longer and is, as they say, “making arrangements.”There’s also the matter of Dylan’s personal archives—a massive data dump of notebooks, contracts, manuscripts, films, tapes, and correspondence—being sold off to the University of Tulsa in 2017. Heylin’s new research draws heavily from this collection. More than a conventional, or conventionally readable, biography, A Restless, Hungry Feeling feels more like a hefty appendix to extant Dylan bios, or an advanced research seminar in Dylanology. Heylin lays out his own project a little ghoulishly, declaring it “a new kind of biography written in the same milieu as its subject but with the kind of access to the working process usually possible only after an artist’s death.” In his music and presentation of himself, Dylan has always been mercurial, recalcitrant, unknowable: a wiggly mess of creative impulses that Heylin hopes to pin down, playing the Dylanologist as lepidopterist. At the risk of dismissing the whole venture out of hand, I can’t help but wonder how useful this is. First of all, there’s a simple matter of credibility. Heylin, like anyone who cares even a little bit about Bob Dylan, takes for granted that his subject is a master fabulist, if not a compulsive liar. From his made-up name to his imagined backstory, to his preternatural ability to mimic folk and blues forms that Heylin describes as “uncanny,” the “real” Dylan has always seemed like a bit of a phantasm. This idea, of Dylan telling truths from behind a mask, is productively mined in his 2019 collaboration with director Martin Scorsese, The Rolling Thunder Revue—an entertaining conflagration of tour doc and playful fabrication that Heylin waves away as mere “mockumentary.” If this penchant for fabulism is so deeply baked into Dylan’s DNA, then why should anyone reasonably expect that his private manuscripts or personal letters would adhere any more to the capital-t Truth?Dispelling Dylan’s various myths, self-styled and otherwise, also has a diminishing effect. It’s like explaining a magic trick. Throughout his career, Dylan’s identity mutated—from warbling folkie to motor-mouthed rock poet to country troubadour, Christian evangelist, and beyond—as he followed his muse, or his whims, or whatever. He defies expectation and seems creatively beholden to not much beyond his own shifting fancies. I imagine this is why most people like Bob Dylan. Because this is why I like him. And if other people like him for other reasons? Well, then that only certifies his status as the man of manifold possibilities, a Bob for all seasons. Rifling through old letters and contracts for clues to the “real” Dylan can feel a little beside the point, like fact-checking The Iliad against archaeological excavations from ancient Greece. Does Heylin expect to find some smoking gun, a scrawl in an old journal reading, “I am going to make a point of performing my identity, to vex and frustrate the public, and particular critics and biographers?” Such a po-faced confessional seems unlikely, and Heylin knows it. Even the titular “double life” conceit of these new biographies seems insufficient for an artist who recently boasted of containing multitudes.Heylin’s book is riven with the sort of nastiness that marks first-rate obsessives, whose interest in a subject calcifies in time into a thinly veiled hatred.Heylin’s book betrays the frustration of this knowledge. It’s riven with the sort of nastiness that marks first-rate obsessives, whose interest in a subject calcifies in time into a thinly veiled hatred, as the object of their affection fails to reveal its fullness. (A few years back, I was amused by a conspiracy maintaining that The Beatles did not, in fact, exist at all. For such true fanatics, obliteration becomes a form of ownership.) The feeling that Heylin is spoiling his subject is compounded by the author’s writing, which has its own curdling effect. It’s not long before Heylin’s parenthetical corrections of quotes and typos, and his excessive deployment of “[sic]” seem like little more than rank pedantry. His persistent use of locutions such as “learnt” and “’twas” and “knew not” is grating in its pretension. Ditto his reference to a 2011 auction block of Dylan manuscripts as “mouth-watering fare.” Never missing an attempt to diss Dylan’s half-remembered, half-imagined memoir, Heylin repeatedly refers to Dylan as “the Chronicler.” Not since a 2013 Metallica biography habitually identified drummer Lars Ulrich as “the Young Dane” do I recall being so twitchily irritated by a cutesy diminutive.A pervading sense of mean-spiritedness is never far from these pages. That tone is most obvious in the author’s chary regard of his icon. There is persistent air of suspicion, as Heylin develops the image of Bob Dylan as a “Mr. Hyde, a boozer and pill-popper and womanizer,” who would alienate friends and loved ones as he sculpted the popular persona of an “alter-Dylan.” Yet how suspect is this turn, really? As Dylan moved from folk darling to proto–rock star—realizing, per Heylin’s anguished verbiage, that “his preordained role was to tie a lover’s knot around the red, red rose of folk-rock and rock ’n’ roll’s thorny briar”—he became “public property.” If a Pynchonian abstention from public life was, by 1965, pretty much impossible, then Dylan did the next best thing. He recast himself as an obstinate enigma, quarreling with nosy journalists (merely “frustrated novelists” in his estimation), foiling folknik audiences with his played-way-too-loud rock music, and trolling The Beatles. (Heylin recounts the first encounter between the two most important pop acts of the 1960s in hilarious detail, describing Dylan answering the phone in the Fab Four’s NYC hotel suite with “This Is Beatlemania here.” Whether such antics are snide or hysterical likely boils down to personal taste.) If Weberman’s Dylanophilia was openly combative, Heylin’s has soured into sniping and cattiness. He writes about Dylan like a posturing pickup artist negging for attention.Still, Heylin’s claim to be king of Dylanologists may well be apt. If nothing else, A Restless, Hungry Feeling serves as the literary equivalent of being stuck at the bar next to a Dylan Guy: the sort of superfan who bores with tedious trivia and is all too eager to correct any half-formed opinion offered by the more casual listener.Heylin’s subsequent volumes, and their marshaling of the Tulsa archives, may prove more fruitful, if only for rounding out the history of periods in Dylan’s career that aren’t so exhaustively diarized. However revisionist its approach, A Restless Hungry Feeling can’t help but slog across land well trodden. Even casual fans are likely familiar with the highlight reel of Dylan’s mid-’60s apostasy: going electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, being decried as a “Judas” during a 1966 concert in Manchester, etc. Let’s see lengthy fact-checks on the story of Dylan performing all of Blood on the Tracks solo for Graham Nash. Or six pages on the time he played a harmonica in the wrong key on Letterman. Where’s the tell-all of Dylan’s little-seen 1987 film Hearts On Fire, directed by the guy who made Return of the Jedi? Dylan’s mid-’60s run has already merited intense focus. Scorsese’s 2005 doc, No Direction Home, which runs three and a half hours, also wraps in 1966. Greil Marcus, likewise, has dedicated an entire book to 1965’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” This investment makes sense. Dylan’s shape-shifting in this period spoke not only to the fluctuations of popular music taste but the whole world. The so-called youth culture was aging out of blue jeans and bubblegum and making new demands of the world. Dylan once said of Woody Guthrie, “You could listen to his songs, and actually learn how to live.” For the generation following in the heels of the beats and the folkies, Dylan’s music proved similarly life-affirming.A Restless, Hungry Feeling ends teasing Dylan’s fateful motorcycle wreck in the summer of 1966, “when he went for a spin on his cherished Triumph, and nearly met his Maker.” It’s a common fork in the understanding of Dylan’s career. It marked the end of a period of rabid productivity that birthed Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde—a remarkable trifecta of records that stand as the apogee of Dylan’s trademark impenetrability, lyrically and otherwise. Some claim the crash also changed Dylan’s vocal timbre, or even that it snuffed out some divine spark of inspiration flickering within him that would never burn as brightly again. It also marked Dylan’s withdrawal from society. It would be eight years before he would tour again, during which time he cultivated what The New York Times termed the “jealous protectiveness of his privacy” and “the legend of a mysterious recluse.” Like another New York City transplant of the era, Andy Warhol, Dylan was preternaturally hip to the idea that an artist’s real art was himself. Heylin’s book speaks to how attentive Dylan has always been to this legend. Raised on rock ’n’ roll, he was a product of celebrity culture and ambassador of the emerging form of popular music. With an intuitive understanding of stardom and its wages, he defined the times by keeping half a step ahead of them. Like another New York City transplant of the era, Andy Warhol, Dylan was preternaturally hip to the idea that an artist’s real art was himself. Beyond his forbidding talent as a songwriter and composer, Dylan was smart. And savvy. And funny. And always desperate, as he told the Toronto Star’s Robert Fulford in 1965, “to get rid of some of the boredom.”Dylan’s music, at least in the uberproductive interval described in Heylin’s new volume, spoke in a way that was universal and nonspecific. It’s as generous as it is impregnable in affirming different lives in different ways. If Heylin or any other biographer finds something sneaky or duplicitous, or underhanded, or otherwise Mr. Hyde-like about this, it may speak more to their character than it does to Dylan’s. Because, as Dylan once snarled in a testy telephone exchange with A.J. Weberman, the greaseball granddaddy of Dylanology and still the artist’s only worthy nemesis, “I’m not Dylan. You’re Dylan.” The rest, Dylanologically speaking, is garbage.
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The enduring musical power of The Beatles helps carry Sir Paul McCartney to the top of the Music Rich List, according to
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Digging into their psychedelic bedrock…Babe Rainbow are part of a new wave of lysergic wanderers who are establishing Australia’s reputation as a psychedelic citadel.
Yet theirs is a universe seldom explored. Fuelled by endless daydreams, friendship, and long hours surfing, the band’s approach grapples with a hedonistic form of freedom.
Take new album ‘Changing Colours’. A warped alt-pop template that feels as though it’s been distorted by ferocious sunshine, the song cycle moves from all out guitar frenzy to an actual, bona fide Jaden Smith collaboration.
A wild ride, it could well be the finest thing Babe Rainbow have yet put their name against – which, given the strength of their catalogue, is a strong compliment.
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‘Surfers Mood Vol. 3’ (The Bob Simmons Memorial Album) (As picked by Angus, vox)
This is an important moment because the Bob Simmons album took me out from Grade 11 Physics and Earth Sciences all the way to out the back at Fingal Point on a shimmering wing. It was the backing track to our original explorations in anti-hero counter culture at our buddy Isaac’s parents farm in Upper Duroby near Tumbulgum and the original bookshop score in Murwillumbah where old Bruce taught us how to paint and Jack got us all started in playing music ourselves.
Surfing is a clean connection to the Earth and something that probably brought us all together more than anything. The songs are all just full moods and the singing sections are deeply enchanting I reckon this and the JJ. Handkerchief NZ / H.O. Nimrod stuff all deserves a little kiss for keeping us in line while we were still deciding what direction we were off in.
We still surf together every day and I play this record religiously at our dinner parties with all the wives and babies. One of the most exiting things I can imagine is sharing the magic of peaches and surfing with our children in a couple years when they can dig it legit at midnight on Pier 13… see you at Malibu!

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Sun Ra and His Arkestra – ‘The Antique Blacks’ (As picked by Miles, drums)
Sun Ra’s output, whether it be music, poetry, performance or a political idea / discussion, questioned, dismantled, and shed new light on boundaries in music and the world they were surrounded by.
Sun Ra often mobilised ideas and energies of people from a surrounding political climate, in combination with a deep knowledge of history and religion which spanned all continents and cultures, as well as Sun Ra’s own thoughts and understandings, to offer truths and new light to an audience who may have lacked access to such knowledge and information or felt politically aligned. Often showing the imperial lens and Euro-centric way of viewing the world to be false and damaging in a way and using their music as a safe and nourishing space for an audience to experience the world of truths, where they are accepted and welcome and celebrated. 
This record, for me, sums up a lot of sounds Sun Ra and band explored. Songs such as ‘Song No. 1’ and ‘Space Is The Place’ offer a strong groove and linear percussive backing to elevate and audience to a place of joy, these songs are arguably more accessible to a modern audience.
This album contains also many tracks that highlight the group’s interest in electronics and what some would call ‘noise’ music or ‘free jazz’, music that I feel is of great importance and deeply interested in.

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Herbie Hancock – ‘Head Hunters’ (As picked by Elliot, bass)
This 70s album bought the high flying birds down from the sky. The head hunters were back on earth. Forging out of the ground the molten of jazz and blues. When I heard this album everything after seemed easier. My mind and spine realigned.
When the groove is in the bag you are cruising. And this album has riches and treasures that will supply the necessities for centuries of reinventions. For bass players devoted to the groove you will find in this album the holy groove of ancient ecstasy. For party people you will find the songs that keep the spirit awake all night.
And for anyone who hasn’t heard this album yet be prepared to feel the rush of lusty vibes we come to think of when we think of the sexy 70s.

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The Incredible String Band – ‘5000 Spirits or Layers Of The Onion’ (As picked by Jack, guitar)
Robin and Mike are a beautiful inspiration. Their poems, and the melodies and music they use to deliver them, are magic.
This – their second album – was them transitioning from traditional folk to psychedelic folk and got me pretty good in the depths of my psyche. Encouraging awe of the natural world, playfulness and whimsy amongst very good instrumentation. Utterly beautiful love songs to cool blues ditties and thought provoking long-winding stuff.
From what I’ve read and YouTube’d they seemed like musicians-musicians in the late 60s scene. Not at all pop-oriented but probably managing to describe, through their music, where everyone’s imagination wanted to go.

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The Zombies – ‘Odessey And Oracle’ (As picked by Wayne Connolly, producer)
With the CD re-issue trend in the mid-‘90s, records from the past started appearing as if they’d been buried in a time capsule. ‘Odessey and Oracle was hailed as one of the great lost albums and it was. Every luminous track is as brilliant as the last.  
There were lots of discussions about it with artists I was recording at the time – you can hear its influence on You Am I’s ‘Hourly Daily’ with the addition of mellotrons and strings. Elsewhere, Elliott Smith covered ‘Care of Cell 44’, and you’d have to imagine artists like The Shins were taking a little inspiration from it, too.
In an era when pummelling a drop-tuned guitar was still pretty on point, ‘Odessey And Oracle’ was refreshingly full of rich melodies, wondrous vocals and harmonies, and complex chord structures.
The cover design suggests psychedelia, but it’s really gorgeous orchestral pop, recorded at Abbey Road in the weeks after the Beatles finished ‘Sgt Pepper’. The Zombies broke up before it was released and despite an international hit with ‘Time Of The Season’, it never really received ‘classic album’ status until its reissue in the ‘90s.
‘This Will Be Our Year’ and ‘Friends Of Mine’ are standouts but ‘Maybe After He’s Gone’ is the high water mark for sunny baroque pop with a deeply sad lyric.

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Babe Rainbow’s new album ‘Changing Colours’ is out now.
Photo Credit: Marclay Heriot
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On this episode of “Everything Fab Four,” Nancy Wilson of Heart talks glass ceilings, guitars, rock and the Beatles
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Is there ‘LIFE ON MARS’? Exploring his new EP…One of the greatest challenges an electronic producer faces is adding the aspect of emotion to their music. With technology so advanced, the genre can come across as too clean, lacking that relevant rawness for people to connect with. However, in the case of Bobby Nourmand’s latest EP ‘LIFE ON MARS’, we see an artist go totally against this notion. Inspired by the life changing birth of his first child, we see the release act as a sonic journey, starting with the sense of fear-fuelled isolation, and ending with the feel of release and freedom. With glimpses of ambient, left-field and futurism throughout, we see an artist in Bobby at his most refined, pushing the boundaries of what electronic music can deliver.
Bobby started his career in the conventional manner of DJing at clubs throughout New York. Surrounded by talented artists, his eyes were opened to the endless possibilities a producer has at their hands. It was that moment he went into the studio and never looked back. “At the age of 23, I got sober and started to pursue my craft into a career. Totally fuelled by passion and to spread the love of music.” He explains: “This journey started in ChinaTown at a venue called Apotheke where I got my first residency. These nights were magical and on fire, literally. Specifically playing other people’s music wasn’t enough. I wanted to be able to express my own message and connect to the audience on a more personal level whether in person or in the privacy of their own experiences, it sparked the flame to create my own music.”
Finding his sound by remixing iconic tracks from the likes of The Doors, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Billy idol, Bobby found himself looking at an alternative dance sound from the very start. That was what paved the way for his career, as the artist explains: “Maintaining the integrity of these classic tracks, the production was minimal. These releases were seen and heard by millions of listeners which gained the attention of the A&R’s at influential labels.
This led to the demand for my own productions because, nobody would’ve been able to clear the samples I was using. ‘SMOKIN JOE’ was my first original release, taking my career to new heights.”
Now, with the release of ‘LIFE ON MARS’ we see the artist move in a new direction. Fuelled by the life changing moment of becoming a father, the EP represents a turning block in both his personal life and artistic career. “LIFE ON MARS was the result of a need to connect deeper into myself, without the influence of my surroundings. This process took over two years to complete from start to finish.” He proclaims, “The journey began with lighting SAGE and getting lost in a Juno-60. There was no shortage of inspiration, as I was filled with strong emotion and the ability to communicate my subconscious through the machines. They came to life. Most of these takes were done on analogue gear which lasted from seven to 30 minutes of granular synth work, my heart bled into and through the speakers.”
As listeners, I think we can often forget that artists are humans too. Riding the same highs, and suffering from the same lows, we all bleed the same. Although, this experience has served like no other to Bobby, a total rebirth in many ways, with endless lessons already been learnt. “Time is much more valuable. Each moment spent creating is with intention, focus and gratitude. There is no way to articulate the experience of holding your child for the first time.” The artist states, “It was an outer body experience. Once skin to skin contact was made, green light filled my body starting with my heart, into my body and then the entire room was radiating with her aura. This healing process inspired the release of LIFE ON MARS. There was a switch once I held her and became a father.”
This story is told sonically throughout. With the EP starting with the minimal, ambient ‘SAGE’ – taking name from his daughter – moving towards left-field with ‘VISIONS’ and ending with the forward thinking ‘SANTO’. Each song on the EP transmits a certain mood, taking the listener on a journey through the artists life. It was an experience that came totally natural to Bobby, often crediting it to his subconscious, rather than forcing anything at all. “My body was just a channel of the source fuelling the inspiration. By allowing this larger energy takeover I was just a witness to what was being created. The less I got in the way, the better it sounded.” He explains, “Inside out rather than outside in. The project started out from total humility, stripped down to the core. It all took form on its own. Genres are helpful once things are complete and ready to be packaged for our listeners and peers. But how can you package something which has not been made yet, that would be suffocation.”
What strikes me about the release is the freedom of Bobby’s approach. Without any form of sonic inspiration, everything that ensued was a culmination of sounds that he holds close to him. He explains this process by saying: “Each song served to purge and turn myself inside out in order to offer this being the most pure experience. The absence of my ego and all else which could get in the way of being the best version of myself. The shift happened throughout the artistry, starting off stripped down to just a heartbeat then journeying through the darkness and towards the light and eventually freedom and clarity.” Some lyrical inspiration came from the likes of the Beatles and Kurt Cobain, perhaps seemingly odd sources giving the futuristic sounds on the EP, but these arrived naturally and helped to pass on heart felt messages.
With a release as personal as this one, that contains as much heartfelt emotion, there’s sure to be a message to all those listening. For Bobby, that message is one of hope. Prior to this experience, he found himself in a dark place, void of any faith and feeling lost, contemplating the meaning of life, and then he found himself blessed. “The smallest sliver of light can radiate in the darkest times. LIFE ON MARS is that light – a journey that was born out of an awakening.” Bobby proclaims. “Its mission is to clear the air through deep connection – a soul search. You are not alone. No matter what it is you are going through at this moment, there is light at the end of the tunnel.. Without darkness there is no light. Embrace the journey and dive in.”
‘LIFE ON MARS’ is released to the world via Bobby’s own label ‘Deep In The Night’. Created in 2018, the label has since become his home, as explains: “The label came to life in order to showcase some deeper, darker and harder hitting tracks, but genres are dead-end descriptions. My vision is to have the label tell a story, rather than evoke one-off, singular, specific emotions. The music won’t stick to trends, instead highlight the persona of each artist. Moving forward, the label will not only showcase the dark but also the light.” The EP also features the single ‘VISIONS’, which was released via Moscoman’s Disco Halal label in August 2020, becoming one of the first names to feature on the labels ‘Singles Club’. With the song’s alternative nature, it felt like a perfect match, as Bobby describes: “It is an honor to be a part of Moscoman’s Disco Halal family. Once he heard the track and gave it a green light it just felt like the right home for it.”
A release like ‘LIFE ON MARS’ really does show the impact real life has on artists. Made over the course of two years, you can hear just how life changes for Bobby throughout. It’s personal and introspective and it really pushes the agenda of what electronic music can be. A new chapter is being written in the artists life, and one we’re sure to eagerly wait to see what comes next, as Bobby ends by saying: “This release has led to a newfound freedom and the ability to communicate emotions more intimately. LIFE ON MARS has been a therapeutic journey which will forever stay with me as a unique being and also as an artist.”
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Words: Jake Wright
– – –
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Former Beatle Paul McCartney can now add a personalised set of stamps to his long list of accolades.
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How fatherhood and Speedy Wunderground’s Dan Carey fuelled his new album…Stephen Fretwell’s songs have a magic touch.
And as the songwriter returns to the public eye, following a thirteen year hiatus, he can feel safe in the knowledge that his magnificent, haunting new studio album ‘Busy Guy’ is complete, set for a glorious summer release.
Growing up in Scunthorpe, the musician and songwriter, who is now 39, moved to Manchester in the early nineties. Living and breathing music in and around the Northern Quarter, his choice of city showed his desire to establish himself as an artist, while engaging with the tremendously influential music culture.
Featuring songs like ‘Emily’ and ‘New York’, Fretwell’s debut album ‘Magpie’ came out in 2004, followed by ‘Man On The Roof’ in 2007. As much as performing alongside bands such as Oasis, Elbow, Keane, and playing bass with The Last Shadow Puppets, his song ‘Run’ was part of BBC1’s sitcom Gavin and Stacey, where it became an instant classic.
Considering the commitment to caring for his two sons, and not feeling his career was taking the direction he wanted, he took the decision to step away from music, and focus on family.
Encouraging, gently pushing him to release, regular conversations with close friend, producer Dan Carey, of Speedy Wunderground, helped to build confidence in the songs he was writing.
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What’s it like to return and have made a record after thirteen years?
There’s a positivity. It’s enjoyable to think that I’ve done something that people are interested in, it’s like a muscle memory permeates in the brain. It seems novel, and I can enjoy it without feeling too self-conscious. When I was young I used to ‘die’ of embarrassment, in an interview I’d just be completely monosyllabic, I didn’t wanna give the game away, I was just a geek musically. But now, I don’t want to hide any elation that people like these songs, it’s lovely.
Would you say an event prompted your comeback, or was it a gradual process?
My natural stage is someone who wants to make things, I think maybe I should write a novel, get some canvasses and do some painting or write a song. When my children were born that overtook the mentality of I should be creative, I should do something, and I focused everything on them. When they got to school age and didn’t need as much focus I started to think about what to do.
The music industry you return to is different to than the one you left, do you see that too?
I don’t really see it, I look at the whole thing very fondly and uncritically, with a sense of awe compared to when I first got into it as a young kid, when you’re careful, you don’t know left from right. I look at music, everything creative these days as just positive, the world that we live in it seems that I think there’s going to lots of amazing things that are going to come out of this period that we’ve been locked. I hope people have been forced to look at themselves and assess themselves in close quarters and create things.
Dan Carey plays a key part in your music journey, tell me about the relationship.
Dan’s someone, who has challenged me and questioned what it is that I do, what the point of writing music is. That’s the constant point of conversation I’ll have with him, of him questioning whether something is needed, whether it’s worthwhile, if it needs to be re-thought, and that’s difficult to go up against, sometimes. Honestly, he’s probably the most important person creatively that I ever came across in my life.
How did you and Dan shape the conversations around this album?
For ten years we talked about what a record would sound like, in a casual way, we’re close friends, he was supportive without being controlling. I didn’t really know how to make a record or what to do, I kept making recordings, setting the microphone up, recording songs and sending them to Dan. We would talk about it. Then one day, around mid-May, I set a microphone up in the room, and I recorded what I thought was the album from start to finish.
I sent it to Dan, and he called the next morning. He said, this is it, we need to make the record now, and I phoned Soho Studios. This record is authentically written, it’s a true record in the subject, but also the craft that went into it, Dan encouraged me to focus on the art of songwriting, he said, I’m someone who can do this. I didn’t really believe I was, I thought I was a pretend Ryan Adams, I thought I was a phoney.
‘Busy Guy’ belongs to a certain type of record that doesn’t get made anymore. Being encouraged, did your sense of freedom grow?
That is true, I wouldn’t dare to have made a record like that if it wasn’t for my manager Ian McAndrew and Dan Carey both telling me that it’s ok. I’d have thought, I’m going to business with all these people, I need to make Radio 2 A-list singles, it felt as if it would have been rude to stand up and say I’m going to make this acoustic record, but my manager and Dan protected it and steered me away from doing anything that wasn’t authentic, so I feel very privileged.
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That comes across in the song ‘Almond’, how was the writing process?
I wanted to create something that moulded in with themes across the songs, there’s a lot of birds and coastal activity. That song took me the longest. I gave up smoking when my first son was born, and I left London. It started out as a love song to London and cigarettes, because they were the two things I really missed, but I ended up back in London, and I started smoking again. It almost became a project that ran beside the other songs.
Every morning when I started digging into one of the songs, when I got stuck I’d go to ‘Almond’. I was trying to talk about the relationship I had with my wife, we were friends, we met at university, she was a philosopher, I was studying English, I moved on to something else and later dropped out. But she became a really good friend, the song is an attempt to take in different scenes of that relationship.
The album tackles the breakdown of your marriage, how did you know things had taken a bad turn?
My wife started to say she wasn’t happy about things and asked me to give her some space, and that’s when I started focusing on the record. We’re still very good friends, we have our two sons, they are nine and six. In lot of ways I fucked my marriage up because I wasn’t working, and I ended up washing pots in a JD Wetherspoons on West Street in Brighton, it wasn’t the most attractive look after being an international songwriter, which I was before I was a pot washer. That’s why I wanted to go to university, I thought, I can’t live the rest of my days being one of these musicians that sit in pubs talking about supporting Dodgy in 1996.
How much do your sons know about your music background?
My music career and my sons is a funny situation, because I never said anything about it for years. We moved to Brighton when my younger son was two years old, and everyone there’s a musician. When he was seven he said “dad, I’ve just seen you on someone’s phone playing on a stage with a guitar.” I asked him what he thought, he said “I can’t believe it’s what you do”, I said, it’s what I used to do. Then he walked into the front room, turned back and said “you never told me about Gavin and Stacey!”
Describe when you took a step back from music. What initiated it or was it gradual?
I didn’t feel that the music I was making was right, I got dropped by my label. Is there any point if you‘ve not got anything to say, if you don’t feel compelled to create something and believe in it. Because I’d never made that much money out of music, I was never a very lucrative artist, I couldn’t just flex the muscle and go on tour, I would have done that because I had responsibilities for my children. When they were born, it seemed as though music meant having to give so much to something that probably wouldn’t be lucrative, I wouldn’t be with my sons, it didn’t seem to make any sense to say ‘I’m a poet, I’m an artist, and this matters more.’
You played alongside Oasis, Keane and Elbow, and John Squire.
Yes, one of the first gigs I ever did was supporting John Squire, when he came back after The Stone Roses. If you can imagine the crowd, walking into a Stone Roses crowd with an acoustic guitar, everyone’s just throwing plastic cups, shouting about wanting The Roses. But I was always a music fan, when I wasn’t playing I was just wanting to talk to people about music, I think that’s what made people ask me to come on tour.
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Were you proud when Arctic Monkeys covered your song?
Yes, that was a big turning point in my life, because I know Alex Turner – he has the same manager. I met him and Miles Kane in New York, and I ended up playing bass with them, so I knew them from The Last Shadow Puppets. But when he covered that song, it was a big deal, it really did spur me on to take it seriously.
What do you feel you gained from playing with TLSP?
Oh man, that was unbelievable, it was like hanging out with The fucking Beatles. I remember going to Paris, and people were chasing them down the street, it was hilarious and quite overwhelming, the kind of gigs I’d normally do, there was no distance between the fans and you, when you walked off stage, you went straight into a room, if someone wanted to come in, they just did. It was fantastic to work with Alex, I think he’s one of the finest songwriters.
You were living in Manchester at one point. It’s a terrific city, what was your reason for selecting it?
I didn’t do very well in my A-Levels in college, because I have ADHD, I messed my coursework up. I was put forward to go to a top university to read English, but I didn’t go to any exams, I had an E in English language and a D in English literature. All my friends were going to Manchester University, I called Salford University and asked if they would take me based on these grades, I explained I had had a bad time, the admissions tutor let me in. I just wanted to be with my friends and get out of Scunthorpe, I thought, I’ll get to Manchester, and I’ll somehow make it as a musician.
How well did you know Guy Garvey? How did the relationship develop?
I bumped into Guy Garvey at an acoustic night, I didn’t know, who he was. I played a couple of songs there, and Garvey and Craig Potter came up and said they really liked my music, would I consider coming to Liverpool and record some songs? I just stood there looking at these two weird guys trying to make me go to Liverpool with them, and I ran out of the place. About three weeks later a mate called to ask if I’d heard of Elbow? I started playing their record every day.
I had moved to a flat on Oldham Street, across from Night & Day Café, I thought this is where it happens, this is where I’ll be able to make it. One day I saw a guy walking down the street, I went over and asked if he was in Elbow. I told him, I liked the album, and he just said “all right, cool”. I couldn’t work out why he was being off with me, he said I’d been rude the other day when they asked me to come and record songs, and then he walked off. I couldn’t believe it was him, I spent about five weeks trying to explain the situation.
But he eventually came around. How immersed were you in Manchester’s music culture?
Garvey became the biggest supporter of my music throughout Manchester, inviting me to support them at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, that was a big deal. When you come back to Manchester after doing something like that, everyone’s talking about it. I met I am Kloot, Alfie and the Twisted Nerve label. I met Badly Drawn Boy – Damon Gough – he’s one of my best friends. I got into that world and became part of it, it was amazing. The place’s focused on creativity. There’s a Mark Radcliffe quote about how people in Manchester think a table is primarily for dancing on, there’s not a truer quote about that place, it’s focused on energy of enjoying yourself in a wholesome way.
How do you see your music career evolving?
I’d like to make another record. Left to my own devices, I’m always trying to create stuff, but whether that’s any good, and anyone wants to know about it, is another thing. I hope that I can keep making things, but I’m not necessarily someone, who thinks those things should be shared, it’s a truth that I’ve learnt about myself that I’m job dodger, constantly trying to dodge, trying to get a proper job, that’s the best way to describe it.
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Stephen Fretwell will release new album ‘Busy Guy’ on July 16th.
Words: Susan Hansen
Photo Credit: Holly Whitaker
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