Episode 665: Duglas Stewart (BMX Bandits)

[00:00:01] Yeah, I mean, I think some people who just, you know, they don't like the whole genre of popular music and then, you know, they just listen to classical music or just listen to, you know, jazz or whatever. Then I sort of get it.

[00:00:26] But I think if you like popular music and you have no appreciation of the Beatles, I am slightly suspect of that. I know that you're, like myself, a big Beach Boys fan and it's been nice seeing them.

[00:00:41] I think they've been having a bit of a renaissance over the past decade or two. Yeah, definitely. I mean, of course there's now kind of sad news about Brian being diagnosed with dementia.

[00:00:54] But I do think the people, because I know some people are quite close to him and it just feels like the people around him really do have his best interests at heart, you know, these days. Which of course wasn't always the way. So I mean that's good.

[00:01:12] Yeah, he also lost his wife recently which, you know, I'll say my grandfather after my grandmother went and then his dementia just really spiked. There's something about that. Those two things are very much connected. Oh yeah, I think a shock.

[00:01:28] It's like a lot of old people will have a fall that seems quite an insignificant fall. But after that or after they've been working long after, you know, their supposed retirement day and then they suddenly stop, all these things can trigger it.

[00:01:42] I met Brian and Melinda together in 1996 and they were both really delightful. That was before he'd started doing gigs again and stuff. I don't know, at that point was he still in the throes of all of the Eugene Landy stuff?

[00:02:02] It must have been a little bit after that. No, it was after that because that was, yeah, I guess Melinda was part of the thing that ended up rescuing him from the kind of clutches of Landy.

[00:02:17] So yeah, he was in a much better place than David Leaf, although never been his official manager. You know, he's written about Brian a lot and he's a good friend. David kind of set up the opportunity for us to go down to London to meet him and film

[00:02:32] a little interview with him. And as I say, it was around about the time that he was still doing some work with Don Was but he was removed from, or Landy was removed from Brian's life, which was a good thing. Anyway, sorry for that.

[00:02:48] A week or two ago had Don Was on the show and he is, I think he's one of those people, people know Was not Was, but he's one of those people who doesn't get credit for being this through line between so much late 20th century,

[00:03:06] early 21st century music. Yeah, there's a whole bunch of guys like that who they're not really stars as such, but they do so many things and as you say, are involved in so many projects. They tend to almost be invisible figures.

[00:03:26] One of the things I appreciate about him specifically is kind of the breadth of the music that he plays. You know, he sees the, he has, he is and for a long time has been the

[00:03:42] president of Blue Note Records in New York and he's also in a band with Bob Weir, which. And he did some recordings with Brian Lawson. So I mean just from both. And Dylan, how did you find Brian to be at that point? He was in really good form.

[00:04:03] I mean, I think I met, I spoke to him a couple of times after it and met him a couple other times. But he was with Melinda and we filmed the two of them together and there was a real warmth between the two of them.

[00:04:18] I would say Brian was, I mean, he was always going to be Brian. You know, it was never going to be like having a chat with someone who wasn't damaged in some sort of way, but he was really, really friendly.

[00:04:32] And you know, we were talking about little details about specific tracks and he was just remembering them all. No, it wasn't any sort of, you know, he didn't, he didn't know what we were talking about or he couldn't remember sessions and things.

[00:04:47] And if I know we asked him about, he knew about. And I'm a massive fan of The Beach Boys Love You, which is my favorite Beach Boys album. But it's like, you know, it's one that definitely splits the vote.

[00:05:01] And without us prompting him at all, he said that that was his favorite Beach Boys album, which of course I was delighted by. My friend David Scott, who I was doing the interview with, it's his favorite as well.

[00:05:15] I mean, a lot of people like Alex Chilton who, you know, we worked with and we did have Brian Wilson's tribute album. Alex straight away was, well, I'm doing something off Love You because I know how to play every track on that album because it's my favorite.

[00:05:27] And Carol Wilson taught Alex Chilton to play guitar. The Box Tops toured with The Beach Boys as the support act. And Carol taught him how to play guitar. Cause he was like 15 in the Box Tops, right? Yeah.

[00:05:46] I mean, by this point, I think he would have been a little bit older because I think this was 69 because after the tour, Alex went back to Dennis' ranch. And could you guess who was staying at Dennis' ranch at that point?

[00:06:03] I have the way your face lit up. I have an idea who it might be. Yeah. So the Mansons family. Not a reputable figure. No. And yet, so Alex is kind of, it was interesting that whole tour at top guitar and he also ended up meeting Charles Manson.

[00:06:21] So Alex Chilton met Charles Manson at Dennis Wilson's ranch. Yeah. And he got sent for the shopping one day and I told the story that he got sent for the shopping and it was quite a walk to the store. He didn't drive. Maybe he did later.

[00:06:39] I'm not sure, but he didn't drive that time. So he did a long walk and he got given a list. And when he arrived back at the house, one of the Manson family stopped him and said, we want to check you got everything. And he'd forgotten the milk.

[00:06:54] And they said to him, well, you've forgotten the milk. You need to go back and get it. And Alex is, you know, he was a sort of fiery guy in a lot of ways. And a lot of people, I think if he'd said to him, he would have

[00:07:06] went, get lost, you know? I'm not walking another eight miles to get my milk, but it was like, I thought it was a good idea. I don't know why. I just thought it was a good idea. So I walked back and I got the milk.

[00:07:20] I had my inkling and now it's confirmed, but you are a font of music trivia. And I say this because one of the things that I find useful before speaking with somebody is to go through and look through the recent social media activity, you know, just

[00:07:37] to see what they've been thinking about doing lately. And I had no idea. This is just every once in a while you'll, you'll, you'll find something out about something and it will just completely recontextualize it. I didn't know that, um, blank generation and, and

[00:07:57] pretty profound way was almost a cover. Yeah. I mean, it's musically as, as, as very, very similar. And I mean, actually it made me like blank generation better when I figured that out. Cause I thought, well, that's so clever. That's such a great idea.

[00:08:14] Taking this thing and this other piece about the beat generation and turning it into the blank generation. And as I say, I think I'm a big fan of Rod MacEwan who wrote the beat generation. And he's, I think for some people again, he's a bit

[00:08:28] like the Beach Boys Love You. He's a bit of a, a kind of a figure, but some people would just laugh at and dismiss. Polarizing perhaps. Yeah, polarizing. Um, but I think he did a lot of really great things

[00:08:41] and you know, one of the other things that was mentioned was, well, he was the first person commissioned to write a whole album for Frank Sinatra. And I loved his response to writing that album about maybe 40% of the album's spoken word.

[00:08:56] So you think you've been the first songwriter commissioned to write an album for many people regarding the greatest singer of that era. And you presented an album that's partly spoken, you know, about 40% spoken word. That's quite far out.

[00:09:14] And he made a, in 1977 I think it was, he made a gay disco album, which has got a pretty out there sleeve. He was, you know, he was a radical in the Maverick. It's a male porn actor with a fist full of, um, animal vegetable shortening. Yeah.

[00:09:34] Uh huh. You know, the implications I assume are pretty clear for people. Yeah. And then, yeah, I'm not going to repeat the title because the imagery it would create alongside the can of the product is quite blown. But so I think that's very often the way

[00:09:51] that people to me who are really interesting artists are the sort of people that people could laugh at. And I think that's, you know, I think that's happened all through, I guess the history of art and music. I remember Norman Blake more famously of

[00:10:09] teenage fan club who also has been on the show. Yeah. Yeah. And he's been part of BMX Bandits family for a long, long time. And he's like one of my oldest friends. He was once interviewed and said, what do you need to be in the BMX Bandits?

[00:10:21] And he says, you need to be not frightened of ridicule. And I think he's, he's right. You know, What does that mean to you? I think it means, I don't think we've ever played safe. And I think, yeah, I'm maybe a bit of a

[00:10:37] polarizing figure for some people. Sometimes I think it's with people who don't actually even know BMX Bandits music. They just sort of have an idea about me or they maybe seen me a bit and they think, oh yeah, he's just a kind of

[00:10:50] funny guy, you know, kind of quirky guy. We wouldn't even bother listening to the work because we've kind of, we've got, we know what he's all about. And, and yeah, I was always the sort of guy, you know, in our hometown,

[00:11:05] we kind of came from a pretty rough ex-industrial kind of background. The town we grew up, hard drinking sort of town. And, you know, people would generally through my teens and past that shout, a lot of people would be shouting abuse at me and laughing at me.

[00:11:24] But I never actually, the arrogance of youth, I actually kind of quite, I found that empowering. I quite liked, you know, so it was like if I caused outrage when I walked by a certain pub, you know, a bar, I don't know if the term

[00:11:41] pub is in common usage or I guess it's not. Yeah, so if you walk by, if you walk by a bar or a pub and they'll sell it and people are shouting abuse at you because of the way you look or you don't kind of fit in.

[00:11:52] Most people maybe the next day would go a different route or something. But the arrogance of youth would make me make sure I was wearing something much more outrageous the next day. So if you were annoyed on day one, you know, the next day I'd

[00:12:07] go by maybe wearing a deerstalker and smoking a Sherlock Holmes pipe, you know, or something just to... So I think there's an aspect of that in the makeup and the DNA of BMX bandits. We don't deliberately go out of our way to annoy people, but if

[00:12:26] people are annoyed at us, we're not going to calm it down for you. It's really interesting to hear you say all this because, you know, from my point of view and for as long as I've known about the band, I would never have thought to call you polarizing.

[00:12:44] Well in the early shows we used to do, and I think this was the same for people like orange juice and things. I think it was just the sort of time we came out. We don't get this now, but, you know, people would throw

[00:12:59] glasses, you know, as in like be really abusive and quite a few times if we played in Aberdeen, which is like an oil city in the north of Scotland, we quite often would have to get the police to come and escort us out of the building because the

[00:13:12] audience would be so outraged with it. You know, a percentage of the audience would love us. Vaseline's had that thing as well. The percentage of the audience would love us, but a big percentage of the audience wanted to kill us. And it's not really, it's not

[00:13:29] so much like that. I think it was just we didn't present the image of the macho head in a stick, kind of poisonous, kind of masculinity, kind of a rock star thing. Yeah. And around about that time in the 1980s, some people found

[00:13:51] that still found that a kind of problem, you know. I have the perception that a lot of sort of the early like punk bands, for instance, probably ran afoul of a lot of people. So it's again, it's a little surprising to hear that, you

[00:14:06] know, coming after that kind of countercultural movement that people were still that closed off. A lot of those people shouting abuse and things were actually, ironically, people who weren't just there was older kind of rock fans, but it was definitely people who'd been kind of in the punk

[00:14:24] rock wars in some sort of way. But I guess being expanded sand orange just weren't presenting a kind of aggressive male thing that some punk bands like Sex Pistols sort of did. I was just talking to somebody about this the other day because John Lydon is

[00:14:41] also a button pusher, but in a very different way than you are. Yeah. And he got, you know, he would get a kicking occasionally. Because of that. And I mean, I generally didn't, I managed to avoid getting beat up in most occasions, but it was a couple

[00:14:56] of times where, you know, someone hit me over the head with a metal bar because his idea of pushing buttons is, you know, bracing like fascism, which is a different approach. I suspect that for you, maybe a lot of it came down to, I

[00:15:16] don't know, were you, were you called, were there like gay slurs tossed about? Was it that kind of thing? Yeah. I mean, that was definitely part of it. I mean, there's a track on the new BMX Bandits album, which actually addressed all this. It's called My Name is

[00:15:30] Douglas. In brackets, don't listen to what they say. And the track is sort of like a dramatization of a little scene put to kind of electronic musical theme where various, Calvin Johnson from Be Happening and J. O. Head from Swell Maps are playing kind of naysayers,

[00:15:48] kind of saying, who is that weirdo? Who is that, you know? Calvin Johnson of all people. I know. Well, I wanted the people on it doing those parts to actually be people like myself in a way, you know, who weren't exactly like regular guys or regular guys.

[00:16:10] We are regular guys in some ways. Not a bully though. Yeah, not bullies and kind of anti-bullies, you know, because I've seen Calvin facing off, kind of bullies in an audience and I've seen Joe doing it as well. And then, you know, there's also who is that sissy?

[00:16:26] His name is Douglas and he's not quite right. And then there's a kind of chatting about, you know, Douglas, Douglas, he's not quite right. And then I come in and I do my little bit about, you know, not being maybe quite right, not being completely

[00:16:38] normal, but being happy with being that way and kind of, I guess the song's kind of thesis is, you know, if you're like me, don't listen to those voices, those naysayers. And sometimes people don't have that arrogance of you thing that I was fortunate

[00:16:56] enough to have and it really can cause a lot of damage for people which can go right through the whole adult life. But yeah, don't listen to those people because, you know, they're the losers, you know, those kind of haters. And I mean, when we joined

[00:17:12] Creation Records, Alan McGee, one of the reasons Alan McGee signed BMX Bandits was he had decided he really hated us, but he'd never heard us, he'd never heard us or seen us. And Alan was big enough to kind of say to me, he had serious drugs and

[00:17:30] then he had a bunch of other records and then came to see us live and really, really loved us and went, I had my idea because of the way some of the music press write about you, that you would be this band that I would totally hate.

[00:17:43] I thought you were going to be some sort of throw away, slightly arch annoying comedy act or something, but you've got this music that I love. So he signed us because he wanted to convert the world, you know, to the idea that we weren't like that.

[00:18:02] You know, but I can't help being the way I am in between songs. It's probably partly a nervousness thing that will say things that people giggle at and stuff like that. Cause I can't just stand there or I would like, but ah, so yeah, he

[00:18:18] wanted to go, well, but listen to the records, you know, when I'm gone. Do you think he was successful in converting the world? Not in converting the world, but definitely a lot of people because up to that point we pretty much in the music papers only had

[00:18:35] bad press. You know, we had in broadsheet newspapers and in radio shows and broadcasters, we'd had a lot of kind of positive reactions. But, and with things like the NME and the sounds back then, it was always kind of bad. And then we released serious drugs on creation

[00:18:52] and it was like single of a week and pretty much, you know, every, every music paper was hailing it as, you know, a really important record. And so that, and that was probably partly because, you know, Alan had turned people's heads around and we still

[00:19:08] need to really thank him for that. I remember going to the creation office and he called everybody who worked in creation and by that time that was quite a lot of people, even the people that were working in the warehouse. He called everybody into his office to

[00:19:19] play them serious drugs. He said, you know, I really believe in this track and I really believe in this band and I want everybody to like give it the best they possibly can, you know? And you can't ask for more than that. It ends up not being

[00:19:34] a hit partly because the BBC ended up banning it because they were running an anti-drugs week. The week it was going to be released. And it wasn't a pro drugs record, but... The mere mention of the word in the title was enough. Yeah. I mean, it's a

[00:19:49] provocative title, but Radio 1 we had been told it was going to be record of the week in one DJ show and it was going to be like on the A list and then they announced for Ant A Drugs Week and the news was broken to Creations, Pluggers.

[00:20:03] We can't have a record as a record of a week in some of these shows that's saying get some serious drugs. Funnily enough, Ebeneezer Good by the prodigy. Not by prodigy, who was it that did Ebeneezer Good? Eazer Good, Eazer Good, Ebeneezer Good. Oh man, I forgot

[00:20:25] the name currently. The Shaman. That was actually saying Eazer Good, Eazer Good. That got through Bullet Pole and that was getting played on for Ant A Drugs Week. But our record, which wasn't encouraging people to take drugs that go banned. There's such a big portion.

[00:20:42] There's such a large element to all of this that it really comes down to luck that I think a lot of people don't really discuss, you know, that it really that it's not only just being obviously you have to be good at what you do

[00:20:57] and timing is also important, but there's also just these all these external forces that you can't you can't account for when you're going out there. Yeah, and yet honestly, I mean, I sometimes think maybe I'm the lucky one. Maybe the fact it wasn't a hit. Maybe that's actually

[00:21:16] a better thing to happen. Maybe my life would be completely messed up. Maybe I would be. Well, you know, I am messed up in some ways, but maybe I'd be messed up in much more serious ways. You know, because success, you know, for some people,

[00:21:29] success is the thing that leads to the the eventually, you know, checking out of the planet like way earlier than you would think or stuff like that. Success isn't always a blessing or that kind of success. You know, so sometimes, you know, one thing is

[00:21:46] I'm allowed to make the records that I want to make. And I don't have to do things like, well, you know, if this one doesn't sell quite as much, we may have to sack the caterers and we may need to sack like a couple of our merchandise crew

[00:21:59] because we don't have we don't have those people. You know, so if our records don't sell as much as expected, which isn't that much necessarily. It's only us. But there are pragmatic and practical concerns, though. I mean, just in terms of actually making a living

[00:22:18] doing this for as long as you have. Of course, I mean, that is a struggle. I had a day job at one point when my first son was born. I worked I still was making some music, but I worked for the BBC and radio and then television

[00:22:31] for 10 years. What year was that about? That was from about well, he was born in 94. But by about in 96, I was kind of working at the BBC, kind of full time for about 10 years making like TV shows and radio shows and stuff. And there came a point

[00:22:51] where I was like, I need to be making more music again. I need to. So. I kind of turned my back at that point on having that sort of, you know, being able make sure I could pay my rent and all these sort of things. Because, yeah,

[00:23:08] it's sort of like having a disease. The thing I'm I mean, I can do is make records and that's sort of what I feel I'm made to do. And I'm not necessarily a money making machine. You know, and I think I definitely know

[00:23:26] people who feel the pressures of, well, if we do something a bit different or if we really go out there, you know, that could that's a lot of pressure, you know, we're letting a lot a lot of people down. And also I've now got this lifestyle

[00:23:44] that is going to be maybe hard to they walk away from, you know, I'm currently in a little kind of cupboard underneath the stairs because we don't have a space room and things like that. But I'm not unhappy about that. It's fine. You know, it's a great

[00:23:58] little studio, honestly. Yeah. And I can, you know, my my jackets are really close by. And, you know, the other day I was in doing an interview and I found I can't see it right now, but I found my Kermit the Frog tracksuit that I thought had misplaced.

[00:24:13] I'm sorry, Kermit the Frog tracksuit? Well, it's actually only the top half. Yeah, it's an Adidas Kermit the Frog. It's not easy being green. Tracksuit top. It doesn't actually look like Kermit the Frog. No, well, it's got a big embroidered Kermit the Frog on the back of it.

[00:24:31] And it says it's not easy being green. Wait a minute. Yeah, I need to see this if you've got that handy. We're not going to be using the video in this interview, but I... Yeah, this is a good bet for the listeners.

[00:24:45] This is what radio's made to do. Oh yeah, find it. He's in a very small space. Oh, wow. OK, so let's describe this. OK, so it's... Oh yeah, there you go. So it's very, it's extremely green and it's got a Kermit on the back. And that's Adidas?

[00:25:03] Oh yeah. And... He has embroidered. It's not just a bad print. It's like he's embroidered there and the lining. How did you come into this? Naturally, do you know? Someone bought it as a present. So I don't know where he got it.

[00:25:19] But I used to have Kermit the Frog at Adidas trainers. And yeah, Kermit... Kermit is like, you know, Jim Henson is the biggest guy in my life as pretty much any pop star or rock star. In fact, more than most pop stars and rock stars.

[00:25:37] And I think Beam Expandance, you know, the whole thing, Kermit has this kind of eep that's almost like a black-gum officer, this extended family who get together and have crazy adventures and put on shows and things. And I sort of think Beam Expandance is a bit like that,

[00:25:50] you know, because Norman and Sean Dixon, you know, left Beam Expandance officially years and years ago. But we're still going to pop up, you know? That's great. Do you think that to an extent, the fact that you haven't been, I guess, confined in a van touring

[00:26:08] with those two guys for decades has strengthened your relationship? I mean, possibly. I do wish, you know, like sometimes Sean and I stayed geographically closer together. You know, in terms of America, you know, that might seem ridiculous because, you know, Britain's a pretty small country.

[00:26:30] But yeah, he lives, you know, in the very south of London, and I live in Scotland. So listen, I live in I live in Queens and it is so difficult for me to get to Brooklyn to see people. So I completely I can I can empathize with that.

[00:26:44] Yeah, you know, and but as it possibly is. And it's also just kind of lovely that they actually they want to spend some of our time occasionally doing stuff, you know, really to the Beam Expandance universe all these years later, because it's almost 40 years since Sean and I

[00:27:03] formed the Beam Expandance because it was the two of us who started the band back then. Obviously there are all obviously, you know, certainly Teenage Fan Club has done well for themselves in terms of, you know, stick sticking around and staying together.

[00:27:17] But there are so many cases of I always I always say if you want to test a relationship, the strength of relationship, you move in with somebody like it's a really good way. That kind of gets to the bottom of if you're compatible with somebody.

[00:27:30] And I think that that being in a band with somebody for an extended period of time and sharing tight spaces is a really good way to test the strength of that relationship. Well, totally. I mean, we've always been pretty fortunate about we possibly because

[00:27:44] another thing is, you know, unlike some of my more successful in the common use of the sense friends, we haven't been like in tour vans for months and months and then stuff. I've got a couple of friends who are very successful

[00:27:58] in international DJs based in Scotland called Optimo. And every time they fly, they never sit together. And it's because it's not because they don't like each other. It's actually because we don't want the thing to get worn down.

[00:28:15] So they always do think of, you know, make sure that they give each other their own space and their relationships are really good and healthy one. The equivalent of my role, I know a lot of people who host podcasts with someone else and they just won't.

[00:28:29] They won't really talk in the meantime, so that so that the conversations are fresh when they get back together. And I guess a lot of people have a kind of idea that all bands are like the monkeys or something. The monkeys are definitely not like the monkeys.

[00:28:44] No. I share my birthday with two of the monkeys. That could be something for yourself and the listeners to guess which two monkeys that I share my birthday with. There's a clue in one of the album titles. This is a good trivia.

[00:28:57] I'm going to have to have to dig into this. I mean, I think the easiest way to figure this out is to determine which two monkeys have the same birthday and then go from there. Yeah. Two of the two two monkeys that have the same birthday are possibly

[00:29:10] the two that didn't like each other most, which is interesting. I assume one of them is Mike, because I feel like as much as I love Mike, he may not have been an easy guy to get along with. Yeah, Mike's one of them. Yeah.

[00:29:24] Was it Mike and Mickey? No, I think Mike and Mickey did get on quite well. Oh, they did get on. OK. Then would you say that it's the member of the band that was most similar to Mike in terms of musical background? No.

[00:29:40] OK, so OK, so it's Davey. Yeah. OK. Yeah, I share a birthday. I share a birthday with both Mike and Davey. I remember after, like, funnily enough, Peter Tork, who I guess you were thinking of as the one who did most similar musical background.

[00:29:55] I remember after he died. I'm not giggling because, you know, he's dead. But I saw an interview with Mike and he was talking about how devastated he was about it. And I was like, oh, that's kind of nice. He's got I mean, I never talked to him.

[00:30:09] And at first time we were touring together and he's got I mean, I don't think we had, you know, like we spoke more than a sentence you know, about like the last, you know, eight years. But, you know, I really loved the guy. You're like, what?

[00:30:22] Part of me understands that part of me understands that, you know, they the love the level of fame that they went through. And I assume that their breakup was not particularly easy. And then also just, you know, it's unfortunately this is a thing.

[00:30:37] I certainly you're somebody who, you know, by nature of I think where you're from and the fact that these people that you knew early on ended up doing something very similar to you have been in touch

[00:30:49] with people. But, you know, life life happens and gets in the way. And you'll you'll suddenly look down and realize you've not talked to somebody in several years. Yeah, I think it was just I was surprised because we were actively doing good. Oh, that again.

[00:31:06] That's fair. But I haven't said that when I started working in broadcast in the first interview I got sent to do was with Ray Davis. And, you know, I was really nervous. You know, I got set up for radio and I got sent with my little,

[00:31:19] you know, BBC tape machine. I assume he's got to be a big hero of yours. Yeah, very much so. And I spoke to a couple of other people in the building. You know, I'm going to be interviewing Ray Davis. And I go, oh, I've interviewed him.

[00:31:35] Oh, man, that's difficult. Oh, it's a nightmare, etc. And I have to say he could not have been lovelier for me. It was like he was so lovely, so considerate, really giving an interview. And I mean, he you know, and I thought I was advised

[00:31:51] not to mention anything about his brother and, you know, him and his brother now, I think, you know, I think we've managed to sort all of that stuff out. Sort of. Yeah. But it got real bitter between the two of them.

[00:32:01] Yeah. But they were able to be around each other now and things like that. And he's you know, he said, you know, I love him. I love him so much. You know, I was on stage and, you know, someone threw something at him

[00:32:14] or whatever, you know, I'd I jumped his defense like that. You know. I love him, but I can't hold him. I can't I can't be in the same room as him unless we're on stage. So that is the thing.

[00:32:27] And it probably is the love that makes it so it hurts you so much. Or you feel that extreme emotion, you know, if you didn't care how much about the person and they were doing some things that annoyed you, you just go, whatever.

[00:32:42] But when it's when it's blood, I guess it hurts more. You know, it's interesting that you say that people are telling you who is a difficult interview. I have not, unfortunately, had a chance to interview him.

[00:32:53] I'm going to say yet, because obviously he's on a very short list for me. But I found in a lot of cases that people that I felt going into it were going to be difficult interview, whether because of reputation or because I've listened to interviews that they've done.

[00:33:09] This is going to sound very obvious on the face of it. But if you just ask different questions and if you ask interesting questions and if you make a conversational, then you could win a lot of people over pretty.

[00:33:21] I mean, sometimes there it's somebody's just having a bad day and that's not your fault. But for the most part, you can win people over just by. Oh, totally. Yeah, because I think so many people when you've got a new

[00:33:34] effort, big, big names and you've got a new album out or doing a new tour for getting interviewed by a whole bunch of people who know nothing and they've just read a Wikipedia article or, you know, a little kind of brief press release for that thing.

[00:33:46] And you don't know and you don't care about what the person's done. So when you meet, you know, someone like you in the interview context and you actually know, you know, we can even just see that you're engaged and you're you care about things that they've done.

[00:34:01] They're like, wow. Your guard is up for the first few minutes of the conversation. Although I will say, and this has only happened to me a few times, but I've actually had a couple of obviously, I won't mention these people by name, but I've had a few instances

[00:34:16] where the conversation got so deep and so personal and they weren't anticipating it that they asked me to actually pull the interview because they talked about things they didn't want to talk about. Yeah, I also can get that.

[00:34:28] Yeah, you can think of things tumble out because you're almost you're probably caught out because they're not used to someone actually having that level of them. You've been able to kind of empathize a kind of level of empathy that kind of makes them more comfortable

[00:34:47] than you possibly want to be. I mean, you must have had a secret weapon in that standpoint, being a touring musician yourself. Yeah, I mean, one of the ones I really remember was I interviewed James Taylor and it was down the line.

[00:35:02] You know, so, you know, we didn't have pictures. It was like this, but it was just audio. And he was really, really cold at the start of the interview. And I mean, sort of enough. He wasn't impolite, but he was given pretty brief, you know, answers.

[00:35:20] And I'm a big fan of a ranger called Nick Decaro. You know, he worked in a lot of the classic A&M records. And he was an artist in his own right and stuff. And I knew he'd worked with James Taylor.

[00:35:33] And because I'm such a big fan of this guy, Nick Decaro, I knew that he was incredibly well loved by people he worked with. And so I thought, I'm just going to go out on a limb, but also sort of interested.

[00:35:45] And it wasn't when he necessarily be the sort of thing that the listeners of the show want to hear about, because he mostly people listen and aren't necessarily going to care about what James Taylor thinks of Nick Decaro because I haven't heard of him.

[00:35:56] I don't necessarily know who he is. And I said, you know, I hope you don't mind me asking you. Someone I'm a massive fan of is the late Nick Decaro. And, you know, I know you worked with Nick.

[00:36:08] And I was just wondering, you know, if you had any reflections on it. And that was the point. Everything changed. Because he was just like, I love that man so much. He's going to I'm just so happy this, you know, guys like you know,

[00:36:22] he existed and, you know, and he was such an incredible, beautiful human being, such a brilliant musician. And he was, you know, tell him stories like when Nick was leading the orchestra, rather than just conducting, he would be playing his accordion and in time and, you know.

[00:36:43] So the conducting of the orchestra and the accordion wouldn't even be mic'd up or anything. It was just a kind of thing, you know, he would be playing it for his own pleasure and enjoying it. And he was going to the other thing which I loved because he

[00:36:56] guy, you know, he'd worked with, you know, a lot of amazing artists and a lot of big names, you know, people like, I think he worked with people like Streisand and Dolly Parton and people like that as well. He wouldn't do sessions.

[00:37:08] I think it was either Tuesday afternoons or Wednesday afternoons. And no matter how big name was, he was like, well, I can't do that because he played his accordion at the local folks home every Tuesday afternoon. And that was like, well, yeah, I'm not canceling that.

[00:37:24] An incredibly humanizing thing for someone. So I think you're right. If you can find that thing, you know, it's just a thing that people haven't asked him about and I think that means a lot to him.

[00:37:38] And that was also good because it was not in any way about his goal or his achievements. And I think he probably loved that he was just getting to talk about someone they loved who was no longer around and thinking, well, that's good.

[00:37:50] People don't talk about this guy. Are you familiar with Nardoir? Oh, yeah. Because to me, to me, he is the best at that, at just catching people completely off guard. And I think that's why he's so loved. I sort of think if he'd happened,

[00:38:08] you know, if he kind of started out 20 years later, I think he would be a massive, massive social media millionaire. Possibly that wouldn't have been for the better. But it's just almost like he was made for the wrong time. But in a way, maybe it was better.

[00:38:25] It was he did appear when that stuff wasn't quite as crazy. My personal estimation of somebody drops significantly if they're mean to Nardoir. Oh, yeah. For example. And this was, you know, they were they were like kids at the time

[00:38:43] and whatever, but like Blur was kind of mean to him. And I'm like, I love Blur as a band, but being mean to Nardoir, you drop a couple of notches for me. Yeah. There's lots of stories about them being kind of arsey people. And I'm not going to.

[00:38:57] But we're older now. The arrogance of youth can be a funny, you know, it can affect people in different ways. I'm not saying they're bad guys or I don't. They were young and they were huge, too. And those two things don't always go together well.

[00:39:08] And you get some people who have that happens to them. They just remain lovely. I mean, I remember again one of the I was running the interview tent for a kind of big festival used to happen here called Teen in the Park.

[00:39:21] It was like the big festival in Scotland. And I was running the interview tent for the BBC and had to go and pick up Gwen Stefani to do an interview. And, you know, she was really just immediately chatting. And there was a kid who was hanging about backstage

[00:39:36] who had some sort of clear kind of learning difficulties and stuff going on. And then he'd like a karate badge on his jacket. And people are kind of asking her to sign things. And she's signing things. But when he came up, you know, it was like

[00:39:59] so much love and attention, you know, really good hearted. She was like doing karate moves with him and all this sort of stuff and encouraging. You know, and you could tell. Like when we ended up being something like 10 or 15 minutes late to get to the interview tent

[00:40:12] because she was giving them so much. And, you know, I wasn't the guy who was going to be saying I was just kind of going, well, it's worth it because, you know, the kind of amount of joy that she was bringing them by, you know,

[00:40:26] just engaging in it being really, really warm. You know, it's similar to the accordion story, which is in. You know, as somebody who has been through the ringer and the music business, I think when you meet genuine people,

[00:40:41] it's just it's a it's a nice change from music industry people. Yeah, I mean, I've been fortunate most of the people, even people I've admired when I met them, have been pretty nice. And I have met some kind of awful people.

[00:40:57] I assume Gwen Stefani has met a lot of awful people, given like how big she got. Oh, totally, totally. And being on I mean, we know BMX Bandits and this is not the sort of story I would be telling you to put out.

[00:41:14] This is not a sort of story I normally tell when I'm being being interviewed. But BMX Bandits first ever tour of Oasis did was with BMX Bandits supporting opening for BMX Bandits. And talk about people who have we'll talk about brothers who don't get along and people

[00:41:33] who might not be necessarily the coolest to other people. I met I bumped into both of the brothers for the first time in something like 10 years after that within a week of each other. One of them was up with his girlfriend at that time

[00:41:48] and she was taking part in a TV show I was working behind the scenes on. And that was Liam. And man, Liam could not be nicer. He was so warm, so friendly to me. It was also really nice to all the kids in the audience,

[00:42:03] you know, because kids were shooting kind of cheeky things at him and kind of funny things. And he was just being so charming. And, you know, he was saying to other people working the show, yeah, me and the big man, we go way back

[00:42:13] and all that sort of stuff. And I know plenty. I know people who live near where Liam would live. And he's got a sort of persona in the media. But, you know, he'd be the guy, he would be out,

[00:42:25] like he'd give the ice cream van like a whole bunch of cash and say it's a nice day, give the kids free ice creams for the next few hours and stuff like that, you know. And I know people have worked for him and crew and all that.

[00:42:39] And he just, you know, he's such a kind of sweet heart. And then I met Liam, not Liam, sorry, I met Noel at Teen Park when I was doing the interview I think it was the same year as Gwen Stefani.

[00:42:52] And I kind of went up and I was like, walking him over to the tent, I was going, I don't know if you remember me. And he's like, yeah, I remember you. I remember you throwing me out your effing dressing room for smoking.

[00:43:07] And then he wouldn't talk to me for the rest of the time. Is that a true story? Did you throw him out for smoking? The story is, at that time people could still smoke indoors in Britain, which we can't do anymore. And I've never been a smoker.

[00:43:22] It was a quite long tour for us. So I was getting really pretty throaty and I was really worried about my throat going. And everybody was just socializing in our dressing room because it was a bigger room. And I was feeling kind of sore in the throat.

[00:43:38] And I sort of said, listen guys, my throat's a bit of a concern. Would it be okay if people want to smoke if we might be going to the other dressing room or something like that? Everybody was like, yeah, sound, no problem. No problem.

[00:43:55] You know, like Liam, Bonehead, all those guys were all like, yeah, it's fine. And I could see but Noel looked annoyed. You know, he kind of shuffled out. And then I thought, I mean, I sort of took some sort of delight in the fact that he's this multi-millionaire,

[00:44:14] incredibly successful artist. The guy who he left, you know, in the kind of gutter almost, you know, all those years ago, he's still, I'm not saying he is losing sleep. He's holding onto it. He's still holding onto like something that I would,

[00:44:34] to be honest, wasn't like me being, I think unreasonable or devious or, and no one else in that group took personally at all. I feel a certain sense of victory that, you know, and he was on a Primal Scream documentary a couple of years after for the BBC.

[00:44:52] And he managed, he didn't, he brought Beam Expandance up just to belittle us. And I was just like, boy, I really got him, didn't I? The other thing happened in that tour was Francis McDonald who was in Beam Expandance was the other main writer of that time,

[00:45:10] took him aside one night and said, this is very Francis, he took him aside. Listen, some of your songs are okay. It's good, but I mean, you need some more interesting chords in there. Okay, let's look at the song, Live to River. And he's gonna go,

[00:45:27] well, you started with a blah, blah, blah. What about, you know, a blah, blah, blah? You know, it was a chord that Noel had never heard of. And Noel said to Francis, oh, if I use any of your ideas, do I need to give you a writing credit?

[00:45:41] And Francis is like, I don't want a writing, I don't want a writing credit in your songs that worry about that. These songs aren't going anywhere. You know, and then the fire alarm went off. So they were quite literally safe with the bell.

[00:45:58] But it always really amused me as well, but the fact that if you made Francis after all these years, he probably would be maybe not so friendly. As we're talking about this, I'm thinking about how just like such an important part of getting older and maturing is

[00:46:18] being able to let go of those things. Oh, totally. I'm not really, I'm not a person that holds grudges. And I think it's a really, I think I've been so blessed in being that because I know other people who I think are really good people,

[00:46:31] but they sometimes find that kind of pretty difficult and it really poisons you. You know, you're the person that ends up losing out. It's not the person that you have the grudge against. You know, they're probably away not thinking about you. So, you know, I wasn't thinking,

[00:46:47] you know, I hadn't been spending lots of nights lying in my bed thinking about, you know, Oasis becoming a much more successful band regarding record sales when Vium expanded. I was never thinking about it. And if anybody ever mentioned that,

[00:46:58] I'm going to go, oh, I'm pleased for him, you know? You know, and I am pleased, you know, I'm pleased for Liam and things. I think he's a nice guy. But it's just like the idea that you would hold onto something that tiny,

[00:47:15] even though you've had all of this amazing success. You know, it's kind of a bit sad. I think about that with Trump of just like, you know, you got to be the president and you can tell that there are just things, somebody slighted him 20 years ago

[00:47:29] that he's still holding on to. I know, it's a funny one, you know? But yeah, in my world, we've been successful because we've been allowed to do what we sort of want to do. And if we'd actually sold a whole bunch of my records

[00:47:44] and made a lot of other people money, maybe we wouldn't have, I'm sure it would have been great and exciting things that would have happened. But, you know, for me, the most important thing is we've sort of been allowed to do what we want to do.

[00:47:59] And the new record's very like that, you know? You said, John, I'd say how high No matter the demand, I'd always try My best was never good enough