This week in Liverpool…

Q: Let’s get the big question out the way first, I’m from Leicester, you’re Liverpool, who’s going to win on Monday? (English Premier League football)

MH: Liverpool.

Q: I was hoping you were not going to say that.

MH: (laughs) Do you know what mate? I do have a soft spot for Leicester and I hope they are all right.

Q: At least we both hope – I assume - Everton to lose to Man City.

MH: (laughs) The thing is, I was born in Everton so I don’t want them to go down.

Q: Well by the time you get here, it will all be decided anyway and we can natter about it then. It’s a big week in Liverpool what with the Eurovision Song Contest as well.

MH: Yeah it’s brilliant. It’s packed Liverpool at the moment. Everyone really enjoying it, the weather hasn’t been too bad, there’s people buzzing all around the city. It’s fantastic. I love the music everywhere. Not just Eurovision but there’s loads of gigs and festivals happening.

Japan 2023

Q: The Red Elastic Band is as flexible in line-ups as the name suggests. Who’s coming in this trip?

MH: With myself, there’s Tom Powell on bass, Phil Murphy on drums, Nathaniel Cummins plays guitar, Danny Murphy isn't coming on this one as he’s with Brooke (Combe) – I think they are going to America. Martin Smith our trumpet player, Alice, my daughter and my sister is coming. A little gang and we’re really looking forward to it.

Q: From The Pale Fountains through Shack and into The Red Elastic Band. Without giving too much away, are we going to get a smattering of everything?

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MH: We’re going to be doing a bit of everything we think because in the sets over the past say, twelve to eighteen months, we’ve been incorporating new songs when we were doing Dear Scott. It’s good to know that you have songs that are going to work at gigs. Say for example, Meant To Be with the brass but there’s always a good bunch of songs there and we put some new ideas in. I always say to the lads as they were brought up as well with the Paleys (Pale Fountains) and Shack and they’ll say ‘Why don’t we do this?’ and ‘Why don’t we do that?’ and it’s ‘Yeah, let’s go back and hit them’ so we slot lots of Paleys and Shack songs in. So as you said, it’s a smattering of it all Glenn.

Writing and recording and playing

Q: When it comes to playing an acoustic, do you have any influences?

MH: I saw Lindsey Buckingham the other day. He sang a song off Rumours, Never Going Back Again and he was picking and I just thought it looked impossible, what he was doing. People like Joni Mitchell, Bill and Nat out the Red Elastic Band, my brother John, probably some Blues pickers along the way I picked up stuff from.

Q: Are you the sort of bloke who carries notebooks around and scribbles down ideas?

MH: No. I just keep things in my head until I need to write them down.

Q: Great songs generally fall into two categories, the type that’s just a great song - Let It Be for example – and the ones that tell a story like Lola by The Kinks and I think I’m right  - please correct me if I’m wrong -in saying you favour the latter.

MH: I do, yes.

Q: You can walk out of your house any day, see a hundred different people and witness a dozen different things that I wouldn’t even consider to be song worthy but you have a knack of taking things you see and turning them into great songs. Are you just more observant?

MH: I think there is a beauty in us and the way we are. Human nature and day to day life to tell you the truth. I don’t dwell on it but it is fascinating the way we tick. I was reading something about film directors the other day where they were saying let’s make something about the scene, around the dinner table of the actual individuals and it’s like that. It’s about embellishing the ideas of the individuals within the song making the characters more interesting.

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Q: If you were a filmmaker, you’d be Mike Leigh then.

MH: Thank you. That’s a big massive compliment that. I love his stuff.

Q: How much of the stuff that you write gets recorded and released?

MH: There’s quite a lot of songs that have never been recorded. For example, there was song on Adios Senior Pussycat called Working Family which I had written twenty-five years ago. It could have gone on a Shack album but I hadn’t finished the second verse. I wasn’t in a rush to finish it just to get it on the album because I wanted to get the right second verse so it went by-the-by. It didn’t have a home for quite a while and then when we were doing Adios I was in a similar vein as to when I started writing it so I finished it and some songs I write I forget! Someone like my brother will remind me. Someone the other day sent me a song I had completely forgotten about that we had done twenty years ago.

Q: So here’s an idea I’ll just leave with you – Anthology.

MH: Yeah! Go ahead! Let’s have that! (laughs)

Q: The production on all your records is superb, Billy Ryder-Jones being the latest example who has captured your songs onto tape. Who are some of the producers that you look back to and admire because you do like those 1960’s productions.

MH: Oh wow. I think it was two fellas. It was Norman Smith who did Arnold Lane by Pink Floyd and Joe Boyd who did See Emily Play. Them, with Syd Barrett and probably the rest of the band as well, they were doing really fantastic things with the first Floyd albums. Obviously George Martin, Robin Millar as well. When we wanted a producer for the Pale Fountains, we said we wanted a sixties sound and he said he had worked with Françoise Hardy. Well, welcome aboard.

Q: You are obviously very comfortable in the short story telling format and have original ideas. Have you ever considered expanding into longer formats either like Ray Davies did with his TV play Return To Waterloo trying your hand at playwriting?

MH: I do write short stories over the years. I’ll possibly have a look at that sometime in the near future after the next album which we are halfway through. It’s something I’d be interested in since I was in my late teens/early twenties. I have a draw full of screenplays upstairs. I have talked to some of my friends over the years that make movies but it’s never been the right time or the right place to actually develop it but if the stars do all align, that’d be great.

Q: You should do this.

MH: Yeah, I know. I’m with you.

Michael

Q: Have you ever had or ever considered a proper job? Maybe when you were at school or when times were not so good for you in this business?

MH: (laughs) A proper job…such as? I had a couple of so-called proper jobs when I left school but I didn’t like the way they were treating other human beings. It was very disrespectful just because they were higher up than me in the chain for example. No one has the right to talk to somebody like that and I thought ‘I’m going to join a band, form a band’ and I’ve never looked back. I never really looked at what I do as job though. I know one thing, I can write songs. If work means putting food on the table, well I’ve put food on the table over the years.

Q: I did a similar thing. Left school, got an apprenticeship, thought ‘Fuck this’ and ran away to join the circus; I became a roadie and there were hard times, alone in a bedsit with no money but if you believe in yourself…

MH: Yeah. You’re right mate because you’re doing it for yourself. You get your focus and you keep going and for me, personally, my focus has been the guitar. As an adult when you have kids growing up, when things are not going so well, you’ve just got to dig in and keep going.

Q: Who are your Liverpool heroes? Players, comedians, musicians…

MH: The footy players are Kenny Dalglish, Robbie Fowler, Ray Kennedy. Muiscally, obviously the Fab Four, The Kirkbys, Jimmy Campbell…I’m proud of all the musicians from Liverpool. Billy Fury, The Big Three, Cilla (Black), Doddy (Ken Dodd)…

Q: Oh Cilla! One of my favourites and just harking back to the playwright thing, I just remembered that Alan Bleasdale is from Liverpool.

MH: Yeah Mr Bleasdale of course.

Q: Michael at home. I know you are a big family man and I admire that very much.

MH: Yeah.

Q: Are you a film person, books, hobbies…?

MH: I love films. I go out on my bike a lot. I’m getting married in November…

Q: Congratulations!

MH: Thank you. With books, I’ve been reading a lot about the New Hollywood directors. You know, Bogdanovich, Malick, Scorsese and all them and how corrupt it was. How they didn’t like each other and shafted each other. It’s quite an eye-opener and a bit depressing but still fantastic movies got made. The way they had to deal with the studios and how they were a bit disillusioned by it all. I watch a lot of movies. They are good for content for songs and screenplays.

Q: Leicester isn’t what it used to be but it’s still my home. Liverpool is still your home and I suspect always will be and both cities have changed drastically over the last few decades. The difference is, Liverpool still produces great bands. What is it about the city that generates this incredible stuff?

MH: You know, it’s a good question. The actual city centre itself is quite small, it’s more like a village than a town centre. You can walk through Liverpool’s city centre in about fifteen or twenty minutes so it’s a hub where everybody knows each other. People always used to say it was because it is a port and that the bands in the 1960’s were thriving on the G.I.s coming over on the boats and bringing Rock ‘n’ Roll and Blues records so Liverpool was possibly one of the first cities to get a lot of that but also, a lot of people who came over brought their musical influence over with them. They stayed in Liverpool, had families here and when I was growing up, there was always a guitar in the corner of the room or a piano, always somebody could play something. For me, it always thrives where you always know. Maybe that’s the case that wherever there is a piano or a guitar, people are driven to it or drawn to it and it means there is always a scene going on with young bands which I love. It’s fantastic. I never think twice about there not being a scene because there always will be in Liverpool. I used to say it was in the water. The Mersey has got such incredible power, it’s driven and it’s quite hypnotic sometimes so maybe there is something in that as well. Some magnetism.

Q: I understand what you mean about the city centre and that tight community. I was there a few years ago and was surprised just how small the centre is. Coming out The Grapes you could easily bump into somebody you know coming from another pub.

MH: You’re spot on mate and I think that’s where it benefits. You don’t have to go too far for the community so it doesn’t have the opportunity to break up.

Q: Very true. Michael, thank you for doing this. I shall look forward to meeting you over here and the best of luck against us on Monday at Leicester.

MH: And the same to you. Nice one Glenn, good to speak to you.