Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / The Post-Punk Exorcism of The Wild Swans' Paul Simpson [Episode 179]

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The Post-Punk Exorcism of The Wild Swans' Paul Simpson [Episode 179] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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I found a letter from the bank saying it the account had been closed,
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the money had been withdrawn. So I ran the other band members and said,
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why have you closed the bank account? So Jeremy Kelly tells you we
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use the money to buy some shoes for Peter Coyle. Now, so I
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was like, Peter Coyle, he's a singer and an a Liverpool band,
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why have you bought him shoes because he's our new singer. WHOA. It
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kind of destroyed me. Really, you know, I'm still not over it.
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Still the mansing is I'm still not over it. Rock and roll.
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I mean, I'll leave you. You're reading. Little Hands says it's time
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to rock and roll, wrack roll out. I totally booked. Welcome to
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bookdown Rock, the podcast for those about to read and rock online a bookdown
0:47
rock dot com where you can find every episode, along with links to listening
0:50
platforms, exclusive videos, blogs, and the latest rock book releases. Paul
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Simpson is this episode's guest. He's here to talk about his memoir title,
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Revolutionary Spirit of host punk exorcism, part memoir, part social history. Revolutionary
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Spirit is the poignant, often hilarious story of a cult Liverpool musician's scenic roots
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of fame and artistic validation. If Morrissey was the Oscar Wild of the nineteen
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eighties indie scene, Simpson was its William Blake, a self destructive genius so
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lost in mystical visions of a new Arcadia that he couldn't meet the rent.
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Simpson's career goes back to nineteen seventy six, when he found himself at the
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birth of Liverpool's second great musical explosion. Along the way, he co founded
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an christened the neopsychedelic pop group, shared a flat with a teenage Courtney Love,
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and formed The Wild Swans who Burned Bright and Brief in the process recording
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one of the all time great cult hit singles Revolutionary Spirit, Marriage, Fatherhood
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and Tropical Illness follow interspersed with artistic collaborations with Bill Drummond and members of the
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Brian Jonestown Massacre, among others. Eventually, Simpson discovered that seven thousand miles
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away in the Philippines, he's considered a musical god. Presidential suites, armed
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guards, police escorts. You couldn't make it up, and incredibly, he
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doesn't need to. Paul's here to tell us his story A playlist to Paul
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Simpson's music can be found on the show notes page. Paul, Welcome to
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the book Down Rock Podcast. Thank you so much, really appreciate it.
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The book's title Revolutionary Spirit a post punk exorcism. Revolutionary Spirit, of course,
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alluding to a song titled by the Wild Swans, but post punk exorcism.
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Did writing a book about your life and your career feel like you're exercising
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some inner demons because you do get very personal, some raw excerpts in this
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book. Yeah. Absolutely. There's a documentary going to come out later this
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year called Revolutionary Spirits as well, about the Liverpool scene of the late seventies
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early eighties, So I needed a subtitle to separate it from that. And
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originally I kind of half thought it meant something, and a half thought it
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was just a cool title bro from a music memoir. But of course now
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it's out there, that's exactly what it is. Because you don't know when
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you embark on these things how deep you're going to go. So in my
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case, I didn't really intend to write about my childhood. So yeah,
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because along the story short it has been exism, it's been hugely cathartic.
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If not one hundred percent liberated from the past. I do feel at least
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halfway there. Well, there's a entry titled Flowers of Sulfur, which has
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some incredibly raw and emotional words that you put on paper. Here you're just
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nine years old, And you're right. I have got into my head that
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somehow, through some hideous cosmic accident, my soul, my consciousness is no
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longer located within my body, but hovering just outside it, trying to escape.
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What do you think was causing it at such an early age? Because
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when I read that excerpt, I thought about my teenage years, like when
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your transition from to man and all these wild thoughts in your head and emotions,
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but you were only nine? What do you think was the root of
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it? Do you know what? The more research I do, I've discovered
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that nine is is not actually that unusual. A lot of people have defining,
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life changing sort of epiphanies at that age. But yes, you're right,
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though I think it is more common to happen in puberty. Again,
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it was all a bit of a mystery to me until I'd completed the book
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and I was having a conversation with my sister. There's a couple of years
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older than me, and she filled in a few gaps for me because she
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read the book and said, that's when dad went off to Canada and didn't
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come back. And I said, what are you talking about? And said,
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well, you know, you remember when you went off to Canada threats
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and didn't come back. And I'm like, no, I don't remember that.
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And it took me sort of fifty years to work it out. But
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there was some matrimonial discord going on in the home at the time, But
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you feel separation from your dad played a role. Looking back now knowing that,
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yeah, and what came before it was there was a bit of a
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lot of arguing going home, a lot of heavy, heavy atmospheres to negotiate
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for a child. I funneled all that discord internalized, and I thought it
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was I thought it was me. I thought it was and solely me.
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If you've read that, you know so I sort of explained that my childhood
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was very polarized. I had a very authoritarian father, had grown up in
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a boys home, so it was never shown any love, so he found
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it difficult to go love and almost overloving. Were they a very almost a
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hippie, really a proto hippie into into into the New Age or what became
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known as the New Age. So that was quite a purbulent place to dwell
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in between those two repelling forces, you know, a very negative one,
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a very positive one. So it's not surprising that it manifested in some strange
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behavior and some strange thinking. Was the song Bible Dreams by the World Swans,
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is that referring to that period? Not directly, because well, when
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I hear you saying soldier Boys, Soldier on it just might went to that
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excerpt, and I thought, well, here's a kid that's just trying to
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soldier through this difficult time. And the and that the blackest days were bandage
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white, I prayed upon my darkest night. It just made me yeah,
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yeah, well, you're right, you've probably got more insight into it than
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I do, to be honest, because when I'm or certainly when I used
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to write lyrics in the Welsh Ones, I wasn't fully aware of what I
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was writing until the years later, and in the very early worlst ones that
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the mark one Walsh ones, I classed the Bringing on the Ashes as Mark
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two. That's that's the major label. Years when we were still a kind
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of indie band. It's the Mark One. The lyrics just came out.
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They just I didn't think about and I just started writing. They came out
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as if I was channeling. I didn't really know what they're about now that
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did anyone else. Until year years later, I thought, Wow, these
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are quite profound and have gravity to them in a way that a lot of
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music at that time didn't. There's a book you chanced upon in nineteen sixty
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eight that I want to ask you about. You say it changed everything forever
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for you. That's the Secret Life of Salvador Dally. What was it about
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that book that made a connection with you? Oh yeah, I think I
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described it in the in the book as it came into my life like a
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alien seed landing in a suburban garden. You know, I was an avid
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reader. I was an early reader. I was an avid reader. I
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sort of exhausted all the books that were in the children's section of my local
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library. My mom was also an avid reader, so she was in the
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adult section and she said, well, you know, choose some from here,
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which I did, and when I tried to check them out, the
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librarian wouldn't give them to me, so I was too young for them.
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So my mom, bless her, went crazy when I told her, and
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she came over and very pointedly said, don't tack another one from the adult
7:57
section, and I'll get about for you on my tickets. You know,
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it was just a cover. It was a large hardback with a kind of
8:03
a dust cover on it, in a dust cover on it. So that's
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what drew me to it, just the illustrations. So what you've got to
8:09
understand is it's not a book of Darley's paintings. There's some of his very
8:13
stranger ink drawings in there, but I wasn't really connecting with those at all.
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I wasn't interested. I was interested in the words I read, and
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the first words were something like at the age of six, I was so
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jealous of the attention my parents were bestelling about my baby brother. I tried
8:28
to chop his head off by wedging my grandfather's cavalry sort at the bottom of
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the slide in the local plane and I was just like, what well,
8:37
and I kept thinking this this is insane. Yeah. I saw a biography
8:41
on him. He had an interesting life, such an interesting life, and
8:45
the greatest thing about it is he decided to live a remarkable life as from
8:50
childhood. He made that decision, and I just I've got to get this
8:54
booginning. So I took it out and I renewed it like monthly for the
8:58
next two years until I could obtain my own copy. Here there's a band
9:03
that you saw in December of nineteen seventy six. You call it the night
9:07
the Comet hit That was bull In with Roy White. They were checking out
9:11
shows weekly back then. Talk about that time, that the building excitement of
9:16
that scene, which would have been the post punk scene, right, yeah,
9:20
well then the UK punk scene really before it developed into post punk scene.
9:26
That I was right, because they didn't have a label on it yet.
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We'd certainly no, we didn't. We didn't call it punk rock.
9:31
That was an American thing that came from Lex McNeil's Punk Fancy that I used
9:35
to buy actually really both the first four issues from a mo local record shop,
9:41
a great expense, one pound fifty year coffy. But yeah, just
9:46
to sort of prefigure that. So i'd left school, I was a bit
9:50
of a confusion. I looked like a confusion as well, because I was
9:56
into Bowie. I was into Alice Cooper. I was into Hawk and I
9:58
was in a grow up lou Reed and it was you know, Transformer and
10:03
Patty Smith's horses had come out, which blew my mind, but I still
10:07
was kind of, you know, I liked it all. I didn't jettison
10:09
the past at that point. So I was at college doing some sorts of
10:15
photography type display and exhibition design course I think it was called. And I
10:20
met another guy in college and we bonded over our love of David Bowie and
10:24
he said, what are you doing on Thursday? My band's playing. Well
10:28
his band was just him, a drummer and a bass player and they were
10:30
called Berlin and he just a covers band. Really, He said, it's
10:33
this place. Here's the address. It's called the Revolution Blo Matthew Street.
10:37
So I went down. So I'd read about I read about the sex pistols,
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and I hadn't seen any sort of punks in real life yet, you
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know, because we're talking November nineteen seventy six, so it's still, you
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know, punks in London, but it's it's only just spreading to to the
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provinces, to the power cities Manchester and Glasgow. And Liverpool. So I
11:00
hit the club and I'm all dressed in my David Bowie here the baggy you
11:05
kind of plateed trousers and my nice kind of David Bowie her I saw I
11:09
watch my friend's band, and then I go for a pee and the toilets,
11:13
and I'm met by the most aggressive kind of guy I've ever met,
11:18
who's just radiating bad will towards me. You know, he hates me,
11:22
and he hates my clothes. And it turns out to the singer from this
11:24
band called Slaughter from the Dogs were quite an early UK punk band. They
11:28
were never never really celebrated because well they were never really celebrated, you know.
11:33
And rather than being I was slightly intimidated, but rather than being bold
11:37
and leaving, I was kind of excited by it, you know. And
11:41
as I explored the sort of this dark club, which was kind of quite
11:45
sparsely attended, I met some of the or certainly saw some of the local
11:48
kind of exotic creatures, Jane Casey and Pete Burns and some of these people
11:54
that went on to become sort of singers in quite influential bands. So went
12:00
home that night. I was so excited because I really I felt passe.
12:03
For the first time, I didn't feel cool. I felt really passe.
12:05
So I went home and chopped my hair off with my dad's wallpaper sisters,
12:09
which is all I could find, you know, and reinvented myself by breakfast.
12:11
The next morning, I was a new person, you know. So
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I started attending the club. It was three nights a week, depend you
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know, sometimes it's two nights a week, three three nights a week and
12:22
seeing some incredible bands and meeting some incredible people. Made friends with some people
12:26
that went on to be you know Ian McCullough who went on to com back
12:31
on The Bunnyman, Junior Coke from the Tetwa Explodes, you know, Holly
12:33
Johnson went on to Frankie Goes to Hollywood, d DA Da DA, and
12:37
they all we all in our way kind of influenced each other and we formed
12:41
bands and the rest history, you know. So it was so I got
12:46
the night that comic hit because that was the you know, when God Springer
12:50
reached down at such door all as young kids. Here are some funny stories
12:54
in the book, like the night you went on a date on LSD Well,
13:00
Yeah, the lamp post waving at you like Walt Disney. Yeah.
13:05
Yeah, Well the thing the thing with that is, you see, there
13:07
was a huge drugs raid in Liverpool at the dot funny because you survive.
13:11
What's just yeah. To tell the story, drugs weren't really a part of
13:16
the punk and post punk scene. No one really drank very much and no
13:20
one really took drugs. Whatever they mythology about punks and speed is, that
13:26
wasn't actually the case in Liverpool. It was considered very, very uncool to
13:31
take drugs in nineteen seventy six, nineteen seventy seven. By nineteen seventy eight
13:35
some of their record London record companies started sort of signing Liverpool bands and sniffing
13:39
around. These were the older guys, the older generation who came to the
13:45
club packing cocaine and things, you know, And again that wasn't really you
13:50
know, we might have all tried it, but we weren't. Really it
13:52
wasn't really our thing. But Liverpool's got this strange characteristics of your typical Aulliver
14:00
Puddley and our irreverence. We don't really don't really respect too much. We're
14:07
kind of we're very playful, and Liverpool really liked Captain Bifa and surrealism,
14:15
and somethink in surrealism resonates with the Liverpool spirit and rebelliousness. So when LSD
14:22
came on the scene, it wasn't blotter acid. It wasn't the regular dosage
14:28
LSD that is often people's first entry point for LSD. It was micro dots,
14:33
which are a kind of quadruple strength dose. So it's not like you
14:39
can't take a micro dot and you know, see vapor trails from your fingers.
14:43
You take a micro dot and flamingos are flying past your eyes that aren't
14:48
there. You know, it's full on, heavy duty stuff. So we
14:52
had no experience with that. So you know, well, I'm walking around
14:54
Liverpool with Julian and we're in the midst of serious kind of you know experience.
15:01
Was I mystical experienced. So of course that had an effect on the
15:07
music and the band names. And we didn't do it for longer. It's
15:09
a couple of years, and I'm glad we didn't do it for longer because
15:13
for all the wonders of hallucinogens, it brings connecting synapses that may never have
15:20
been connected without it. But it's Also, some of those connections shouldn't be
15:26
made, certainly not while we're in physical form, So I'm never quite sure
15:31
how much. Speaking of some who used to suffer from undiagnosed mental health issues,
15:37
depression, actually you know what I would have called it at the time,
15:41
I often wonder how how big a part of that played, the amount
15:45
of mind melting, strong consuming. I just read a book and Skip Spence
15:52
from Jefferson Airplane and then mobi Gray. They diagnosed them with schizophrenia. But
15:58
it's child that seemed to be pretty normal, but then he took LST and
16:03
acid and something happened. And that's what Sid Barrett they say too. So
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yeah, it's yeah, I think, thankful that you experimented and you got
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past it. But some yeah, yeah, that's right, And I think
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I think that's that's part of my personality, Thank god. Is I don't
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have an addictive personality. I haven't slightly recklessized to me that I'll try anything
16:27
once or twice, but I don't. I tend not to go back actually
16:33
to anything. I'll evaluate it's worth, what it's good for, what it's
16:37
bad for, and then I put it in the storage kind of department of
16:42
my psyche. You know, I don't need I don't need that anymore,
16:47
So I'll talk about the wild Swans Before that, though you were in.
16:49
If I'm correct, Industrial Domestic was the first band you were in. Yeah,
16:56
no, this is hilarious. I Will Sergeant and I Will the guitar
17:00
Steco and the Bundy Man. As you know, we were friends from school.
17:03
We met in school and sort of bonded over our We were the kids
17:07
that were really into our music more than anyone else. We were the ones
17:10
that bought albums regularly, you know, and so we bonded over music.
17:15
And then we left school. I hadn't seen Will for a year or so,
17:18
and then I was going to Eric's on my own, and then Will
17:22
started coming down. So there was a whole new world of the kind of
17:26
new wave of music to export together. We would rehearse together, but we
17:32
didn't know how to play. We didn't even know how to tune guitars.
17:34
We both had guitars tune them. So we had a drum machine and Well
17:40
bought Space Echo, you know, the sort of tape the deal. So
17:42
now, the reason no one has ever heard Industrial Domestic is not that no
17:48
music exists we've chosen not to release it because every couple of years Well and
17:53
I get together. We listened to the cassette tapes with a view to releasing
17:57
them, and then we did SI that the myth is better than the reality.
18:03
Well, there's a Rolling Stones cover Satisfaction that you recorded. No,
18:07
yeah, that's that's not as though. That is so that that is a
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Will Sergeant and Bull Simpson and Julian Cope. So Julian was fascinated by when
18:15
he heard that we had a band called it Just Romestics. So he he
18:18
made me take him up to Will's house and he was so frustrated that we
18:22
weren't actually making any music. We just sat around drinking cups of tea.
18:26
That he said, oh, come on, let's record something. And I
18:30
started playing Satisfaction. Well, see that wasn't my my thing. Devo had
18:36
done a cover of Satisfaction and I was I was a year zero guy,
18:38
so I wasn't interested in the past. Julian was obsessed with the past,
18:42
and particularly the sixties and the psych scene, psychedelic music in general. I
18:47
wasn't. I mean, I can appreciate it, and I can listen to
18:51
it, and I own it that it's I wanted. I was only interested
18:55
in going forward in the future, so I didn't really want to something Will
19:00
did. So it sounds a little bad people, but that that's the only
19:03
that's the only piece of music that's out there under that name, and it
19:07
shouldn't really be under that name. So why Industrial Domestic didn't carry on was
19:11
really because I left home. I didn't live near Will anymore. I moved
19:15
into the Liverpool City Center, got a bedsick, a little flat of my
19:19
own, so I just wasn't seeing him regularly enough. And then by very
19:23
shortly after I I was sort of in a band with Julian and Ian McCullough
19:27
called a Shallow Madness. Again, Shallow Madness never really recorded anything. We
19:33
were just to kind of. We were a banded name only really, and
19:37
Ian McCulloch was our singer, except he never sang. He never turned the
19:41
Three Houses and he never sang. So Julian's insistence we had to let him
19:45
go and Julian became the singer in The t Explodes. Yes, that's a
19:52
pretty wild Swans band. Yeah, so The Turn Explodes. I was only
19:56
in the first EP, which I had a big a large played a large
20:02
part in that first DP, but it wasn't really what I wanted to do.
20:07
The Teter Expers were getting a lot of attention in the music press and
20:11
they hotly tipped the band most likely too. So it was then I made
20:15
the suicide decision to leave the band, with Julian becoming the singer. They
20:22
went on to great success, particularly in the UK. And you have songwriting
20:26
credit on one of the tracks that I was looking at. Yeah, on
20:32
probably about five or six songs of the Cups, well, Sleeping Gas is
20:36
the one that I was thinking of. So Zoo Records who put Sleeping Gas
20:40
out. The Epea by the Tip Explodes was run by a guy called Bill
20:44
Drummond another guy called Dave balf and when they heard I'd left, they both
20:48
came to see me the evening before we were duty court. It was pleading
20:52
with me to to not leave the band. So I told them that I
20:59
was leaving the tear Drops. I didn't tell the truth. I didn't say
21:02
because I don't really like that single very much, that record of the song
21:07
that was going to be the record very much. I told them I was
21:08
going to leave to become the singer in my own band. Thought we were
21:12
going to be like an English kind of version of television. Two guitars,
21:17
you know, they drums, maybe maybe I see strings. So really that
21:22
was just something I said to get myself get out of jail. And when
21:26
I told Bill Drummond, he went, that sounds fantastic. Do that.
21:32
He changed his mind about going, persuading me to stay. And then the
21:34
seed was kind of lodged. I thought I'd made it and manifested it by
21:40
talking about it, I'd sort of manifested it. And then I as soon
21:44
as the band had a name, like I kind of had a name for
21:47
the band before the regular members. You know, how did you come up
21:49
with wild Swans? It was well, weirdly my mom My mom said,
21:53
I told her when I was very little, I was going to have a
21:56
group I'd call the wildst Ones. But I found outrd to believe. I
21:59
don't know, so it wasn't the Yates poem. A lot of people think
22:03
that, and that would be a really credible thing, but to be you
22:06
know, there's a German fairy tale. I think was it German? Is
22:10
it? It might? It might be Scandinavia actually called the wild Swans,
22:12
and I think we might have had a book in the house when I was
22:15
little and somewhere that i'd lodge. But I mean the real reason, I
22:21
think what you've got to understand. In the UK at that time Benz had,
22:25
especially Liverpool, bands had very long names or chestral maneuvers in the dark.
22:29
There's a load of that going on, weird names, and I wanted
22:34
a name that would signify a change, a new landscape, a kind of
22:41
Arcadian. I wanted to make some think that was beautiful. No one would
22:45
seem to be doing that at the time. There was no representative of that
22:48
of a literary musical form referencing all the things I loved, like William Blake.
22:56
And it's sort of all I knew is you know. I I didn't
23:00
know whether I could sing. I played very rudimentary guitar, but I wanted
23:06
to manifest something about you know that it's striving to reach beyond one's grasp.
23:11
So I had huge ambition for this group. And I'd met another kindred soul
23:15
by the name of Jed Quinn, who actually became my replacement keyboard player.
23:21
And the theater explodes and this guy blew my mind, because he wasn't really
23:26
into contemporary music much at all. He listened to classical music and Marler and
23:33
Delius and stuff. And it went to his flat and it was full of
23:36
antique Victorian furniture and he painted. He the most incredible artist. So I
23:44
immediately me and him bonded and planned to perform this group called the World Swans,
23:49
and that was the kind of genesis of the worlst one throwing the blueprint
23:53
for it. And then we just needed a guitarist, and I'd remembered I
23:59
had seen a guitaritarists were very he was only about sixteen playing in a local
24:02
group. Had spoken to him afterwards, and I'd got his phone number,
24:06
and he's a terrible way I was stealing in from the group Groupie was in
24:10
was ruthless, I suppose. So after a sort of false start with him
24:14
and I trying to try to get something together, jedlined rehearsal rooms and some
24:18
equipment and we rang it like called Jeremy Vincent Kelly, and he came down
24:25
and he was astonishing guitarists. So and that's the sound of the Wild Swarm
24:30
Jazz classical influence my voice and melodies and there absolutely Jerry's are sort of useful
24:34
pages. And then the Song of the Revolutionary Spirit was the first that that
24:37
became like a cult classic. And there's a story, the funny story about
24:41
that accidentally recorded in Mano. But then there's also it was in at somebody's
24:45
home and there was some neighbors upstairs that were meditating. Yeah, yeah,
24:48
yeah, it was. It's well, the studio was kind of semi legal
24:53
really. It was in the basement of this house that was owned by the
24:57
Ananda marga kind of spiritualist groups of Indian sort of quasi religious cult, very
25:06
matriarchal, so it was full of pregnant women and just everyone in this pregnant
25:11
you know, are wearing sort of flowing robes and things. So Peter Fratus
25:15
of the drummer from Echo and the Bunnyman, who was my flatmate at the
25:18
time, he offered to not only pay for the recording of the record,
25:22
he offered to produce it and play drums on it. So when Pete came
25:26
down to the studio, he's kind of, you know, doing that thing
25:30
walking around the rooms trying to see what the acoustics like a rubbish what's this
25:34
room in here, you know. So it's in Victorian here. It had
25:37
been a snooker it was a big, big old victory the house. It'd
25:41
been a sort of snooker room with a sort of giant bool table in the
25:47
wood panels. Of course it was perfect through a huge cavernous echoy drun sound.
25:52
So Pete sets the drum kit up in there, you know, and
25:55
he's got headphones running from the studio, and the minute he starts playing,
25:57
well, you know what Pete strumming was like incredibly precise but also incredibly loud.
26:04
You know. But John Burrows territory. So he's in the middle of
26:08
a tape, playing with his eyes closed as he often did when he finishes,
26:14
and saying things, and he's surrounded by these furious, angry women,
26:18
pregnant women in rogues, givens pull modal anger. So yes, So when
26:27
we came out of a studio with the with the finished kind of water inch
26:33
tapes of the mixes, we discoobed it Revolution Splacing ONEO. And we have
26:38
no idea why. When I asked the studio owner, I said, well,
26:44
what do you think happened? You know, there's some equipment failure,
26:48
and he's sort of some raised one eyebrow and suggested it might be because we
26:52
were all on drugs, you know, which was was the case. Anyway
26:59
to get around this, Pete afraid and the bunny one off to America doing
27:03
some dates or somethings. So Pete took the quadrant of revolutionary spirit, went
27:10
into the studio with an engineer in New York who we were told was the
27:15
engineer. Talking heads used, you can't make monostereo, but they did a
27:21
bo stereo mix which we can hear everything perfectly balanced, and said, so
27:26
Pete comes back from New York and Zoo Records have had ascetates pressed off the
27:33
mono version and the stereo version. So me and the two guys from Zoo
27:38
Records and Pete sit down and we listened to the ascetates. So the stereo
27:44
versions all everything. You hear everything, but it's not exciting. The mono
27:51
version, you know, the bass is really really low in the mix.
27:56
You can't hear the acoustic guitars, you know, but it's for some reason.
28:00
It's got the vibe that's it's uplifting. It does what it says on
28:03
the can. It says it's you know, heroic kind of sounding record,
28:10
and we broke all the rules. You know, what do you do if
28:11
you don't want a play? You've faded a record and you have a long
28:15
intro, you know, but it's got a long fade in before the vocals
28:21
come in. It's in mono, you know it, and it's too long,
28:26
you know, it's it's every everything. We did everything possibly could to
28:30
deny getting any of your radio play, but except we had this genius DJ
28:34
in the UK on the BBC called John Peel who completely championed it and he
28:40
played it and he didn't talk over it, and he embraced the fade in,
28:44
and so we became a John Peel band, you know, which which
28:48
in the UK that was the holy grail. If you could get John Peel's
28:52
stamp of authority, that was everything. So John gave us a session,
28:57
John Peel's session, you know, you'd go down to Maida Vale Studios and
29:00
Monton we coded sessions with him, and then that was a gold standard sort
29:06
of seal of approval to get back, you know. But unfortunately, because
29:08
we were so young and hot headed and stupid, we kind of split up
29:14
before we could capitalize on it. We were just getting attention and we we'd
29:18
got the attention of a record company called Arista. Arista Records were a kind
29:22
of European owned so almost like a disco label. At the time. They
29:26
weren't particularly cool, except they had Lou Reid and Patti Smith for the UK,
29:33
so I thought, well, that's good enough. So we were going
29:36
to sign with them, but we split up just before it could happen,
29:40
which was the great regret of my life. You know the book Down Rock
29:44
Podcast will be back after this our guest as Paul Simpson. His book Revolutionary
29:51
Spirit of Postponk Exorcism is out now Spring of eighty two. You're living a
29:55
twenty Devonshire road in Liverpool. There was a whole do a coven of black
29:59
magicians and they raised him eleven entity that wouldn't let you sleep. I was
30:03
living with it, sharing a house or flat in the house with Peter Frasis,
30:07
the bunny Man's drummer, and I'm Younger Zoo Records secretary. It was
30:11
okay, but it was the house was constantly getting broken into, that stuff
30:17
was getting stolen, so we needed we needed to move really. Meanwhile,
30:22
Julian Coke from the Teardrops, who's still great friends of mine. At the
30:25
time, be Julian had been married. He'd got married on a whim really
30:30
without really telling any of us, and then he became kind of famous.
30:33
Around that time he started having hit records and stuff and his marriage sadly sort
30:38
of collapsed. So his flat was vacant, which was on the top twenty
30:45
seven shore Old. It was the top floor his beautiful Victoria. It was
30:47
really lovely flat, lots of rooms, leafy suburban part of Liverpool. So
30:52
Julian needed and his ex kind of needed someone to keep an eye on the
30:57
place until they could find somewhere to you know, split the belongings. So
31:06
he invited Pete and I to live there kind of rent three really to keep
31:08
an eye on the place, which we did. So when I say it
31:12
was home to a coven, it wasn't a coven when we moved in,
31:15
but a covenant, which is we were informed had occupied the ground floor of
31:21
the property five years previously. You know, when all the walls were painted
31:26
black. It was very weird. I don't see in the now. I
31:30
only discovered that later on that the covenent that operated out of it. But
31:33
from the minute I stepped into that place, I felt we were targeted.
31:41
There was a lot of strange stuff going on in that flat. Started suffering
31:45
from sleep paralysis and constant nightmas, just things going on, you know,
31:51
weird, weird things that electric shops constantly. It might have just been at
31:56
the house was old and you know, hadn't been wired up properly. I
32:01
don't know, because the trouble is, you see, when you're young and
32:05
your and you're poorest minded, and you're taking a lot of drugs, you
32:09
draw connections. And the connections I drew that it was there was some sort
32:14
of malevolent entity in that flat that wouldn't let me sleep. Is this the
32:17
same place that Courtney Love moved into? Is that that's in your book you
32:22
talk about that Courtney Love, Shoe Pete and I were having breakfast one morning,
32:27
beautiful spring morning. We hear a taxi put ab outside. We look
32:31
down and we see these two goals kind of explode out of the tax looking
32:36
like sort of broken umbrellas. You know, the team Bride of Dracula.
32:40
That was the well yeah, I mean well, because they were goths,
32:44
you see, they were kind of They were kind of a specific type of
32:47
American goth you get at the time, so it wasn't kind of the European
32:52
cold kind of goth. It was the kind of quite loud, sort of
32:57
raw American variant, you know. I called that, at least that's what
33:00
they looked like to was. Because we weren't gods. We weren't part of
33:04
that scene, you know, although there was a kind of there was a
33:07
sort of god scene in Liverpool based on this club called Planet X. Anyway,
33:10
so Courtney shouted up, oh, hi, are you you? Pete
33:15
and sim oh, you know, we're friends of Julian, and Julian said
33:20
we could stay here. I thought, weird, They don't look like julian
33:23
friends or the people Julian would be friends with. So while we kept them
33:29
talking, I tried to ring Julian to see if this was correct, you
33:32
know, because we did have a spare room in the house. Technically it
33:37
was Julian's flat. He wasn't living there, hadn't been living there for ages,
33:42
but technically says flat and there was. Julian asked us to put these
33:45
girls in. We couldn't really say no, and I couldn't get verification off
33:51
Julian because he wasn't answering the phone. I find out years later he tells
33:54
me that he wasn't answering the phone on purpose. He knew they were on
33:59
their way, but he also he didn't he said to me, I did,
34:02
I didn't expect you to actually let them stay one night. So anyway,
34:07
so we let the girls stay and they were fine, you know,
34:10
they were they were They were nice, they were polite, Courtney being Courtney
34:15
was quite loud and opinionated, but you know, that was probably the first
34:19
American I'd met outside of record industry people, you know, and they were
34:24
they were quiet, They kept on themselves. The only thing wrong with the
34:29
girls staying was that they overstayed their welcome a little bit. You know.
34:34
We thought, well, we'll let them stay for a few nights, and
34:36
we'll let them stay for a week. Well, okay, we'll let them
34:37
stay for a few But it went on for months and months and months,
34:40
and they pretended they were looking for somewhere to live themselves. But I now
34:46
realized why would they They were living rent free in a really nice flat close
34:52
to town. Why would they pay to live somewhere worse? You know,
34:57
I now know there we might tele explodes fans slash Bunnymen fans. So they
35:02
were kind of curious. They were teenagers, young teenage girls. They were
35:06
curious. So there was this would be about eighty two, eighteen or eighty
35:10
two, maybe early eighty two, you know, in our defense, you
35:15
know, because we ended up kind of kicking them out. Really in our
35:17
defense. We see, we were young men. We were having an amazing
35:22
time on the bunny Man are on the rise. You know, this new
35:25
band, the wild Swans are coming up. You know, we're touring together,
35:29
exciting times. We've got girlfriends and and so we were to have these
35:34
teenage Americans living with us was hugely cramping our style. You know. We
35:38
had to we had to change the way we lived really and to accommodate them.
35:44
So yeah, so in the end we had to kind of eject them
35:46
really, and you said, the wild Swans are on their way up.
35:50
But what happened with that first incarnation incarnation of the what happened there? Yeah,
35:54
Well, we were young. I as I mentioned earlier, he's just
35:59
depression. So I was having quite a bed you know, maybe every every
36:02
three months I'd have a kind of fall off a cliff, a metaphorracle cliff.
36:07
And now the trouble is when you're in that, in the midst of
36:10
severe depression, the last thing you feel like doing is communicating. You can't
36:16
talk about it, especially it's dark, you know, you can't really talk
36:20
about So I didn't share my depression with my bandmates for fear of the misunderstanding
36:27
or you know. Also you know, young men they don't talk, but
36:30
not like you know, women talk about their problems. They share their problems
36:32
with their friends. We don't do that. We never used to. So
36:38
one of my escapes when I was feeling depressed was I would I would I
36:43
would head over to Europe because you could afford to do that. There's very
36:46
cheap. You could get a you could get a thing called a Transalpino free
36:51
city ticket, so but twenty five quird. You could have a past vid
36:57
used on trains, ferries anywhere in Europe, any three cities in Europe.
37:02
You know, it's ridiculous now to think about that. You know you'd have
37:07
to, you have you struggle a bit to eat, and you know,
37:09
but you knew you could kind of travel. So I took myself off to
37:15
Amsterdam. It was one of my regular haunts because it was nothing to do
37:20
with drugs, because I didn't take drugs in Amsterdam, because that's the first
37:22
thing people say when I say, oh I used to go to Oh yeah.
37:25
There was nothing to do with that. It was just something resonated.
37:30
It was the freedom. It's a very liberal city, as you know,
37:32
and a lot of cool things going on there. So I would travel overnight,
37:39
arrive at six am Central Station Ansterdam and just walk the city until I
37:46
could find somewhere to stay by day hostel to stay for a few guilders a
37:52
night. So I spent a week, possibly fortnight in Amsterdam, going to
37:57
the art galleries, the markets. I met a lot of cool people,
38:00
people in bands, people who women second and clothes shops and things. I
38:06
fell into a scene. So anyway, so I came back to Liverpool feeling
38:10
fantastic. You know, I'd come right. I'd cured myself with that little
38:15
pocket for when I came back, I found a letter from the bank,
38:20
the Wellswon's bank account saying the account had been closed, the money had been
38:22
withdrawn. So I rang the guys from what the other band members and said
38:29
why have you closed the bank account? So Jeremy Kelly tells me we used
38:34
the money to buy some shoes for Peter Coyle. Now, so I was
38:36
like, Peter Coyle, he's a singer and another a Liverpool band. Why
38:40
have you brought him shoes because he's our new singer. WHOA Yeah. So
38:46
Jed Quinn and I are great friends. So there was the three that was
38:49
the three members of the wilst Ones, Jed Quinn, Jerry Kelly, Paul
38:52
Simpson. So, jedah and I are great friends to this day, and
38:59
I'm some friends with Jerry as well. But Jed and I have held post
39:04
mortems on this like those weekly for the past fourty years. You know,
39:09
will I never will never agree upon probably net thrillers will never be on what
39:14
happened. But I think the closest I can get to is Jerry was so
39:17
frustrated with me not communicating with him that he couldn't stand to see the progress
39:24
we've made with Arista Records going to waste. So he decided, in a
39:30
hot headed moment, to take action. If I'm being odd, let's cut
39:35
pull out the equation, even though it was my band, you know,
39:38
my baby. So that's what that's what they did. They got a singer
39:43
and who I'd actually spotted myself as and said to them, oh he's good,
39:49
that guy. He's like my only competition in Liverpool, so of course
39:52
that was weird. They got him in, took him through a herb,
39:55
gave him a full steps and her took him to my tailors and got some
39:59
trans is like you know, basically put him in literally in my shoes.
40:05
So I'm freshly back from this trip bar Ansdam, feeling amazing and ready to
40:09
carry on with the wilst Ones, and it's all been kind of stolen from
40:14
me. So of course the depression comes back, Manifold, you know.
40:19
So it kind of destroyed me. Really, you know, I'm still not
40:22
over It's still the magic thing is. I still not over it. Even
40:24
though we actually reformed, I reformed Mark two bag with those same guys,
40:30
it never actually the damage was never healed, you know, yeah, because
40:32
that was in eighty six year reform. This is after good, good research,
40:38
Okay, this is after your form care with the embrodier who did well
40:44
did sign the ersa right? Yeah, well we both did. Yeah,
40:49
was a top fifty UK single. Yeah, so the band without me was
40:54
re christened the Loto Seaters. They had a huge UK hit. They sign
41:00
to Arista to the the deal that the wilst Ones were going to sign because
41:02
they told the A and R guy there that I didn't want to do it
41:06
anymore. She wasn't true, but also Arista also signed her. Now,
41:13
I'm Ian Brody and I were never going to be in a band. That's
41:15
a weird story. We never intended to be a band. I did some
41:19
demos I was going to do. I was going to do some solo demos.
41:23
I asked my friend Will Sergeant to play on them. But when so
41:29
I've written these quite quite fiddly guitar parts, now will start it. So
41:32
fantastic guitar player. But it's not really his thing, but more of an
41:37
our pegteo type of thing. So he said, well, I can't play
41:39
in it, but my friend Ian Brody, his flatmate, will play on
41:44
it, you know, on the demo, which he did. Because a
41:47
very long story shot, so Ian said to me, well, will you
41:52
do me a favor? Will you sing on one of my demos? So
41:54
I sug on one of Ian's demos that I wrote some words for it.
41:59
Because I couldn't single melody and he had done. And then next thing I
42:04
know, Bill Drummond from Zoo Records is knocking on my door said, Paul,
42:07
I've got you a I've got you a record deal. And I said,
42:10
I'm fantastic. I like, well, hang on a minute, it's
42:14
not you, it's you and I and Rody. And I said, but
42:15
we're not a group, and he said, well where it is if you
42:17
want it, Ariston want to sign you up. So, because I was
42:22
so depressed and allow at what had happened with the worst ones not one,
42:25
I thought, okay, why not, I'll give it a go. I'll
42:29
give it a go. But my heart wasn't quite in it. So Ian
42:32
and I and Ian. Ian's a lovely guy, and we got on well,
42:36
we worked together quite well, but it wasn't the wildest Ones. And
42:42
so the worlst Ones has been this unfinished business for me in my whole life.
42:45
So so we did three singles, we recorded kind of two thirds of
42:51
an album, but he did I hadn't really done the finished vocals. I've
42:55
done guide vocals, and I just realized I had this epiphany. I was
43:00
in the studio with you it was never going to work because my heart wasn't
43:05
in it, and you need to believe, you know, if I'm expected
43:07
to go on stage and convince people this is genuine and to go on television
43:15
and to project something meaningful when I didn't believe it was meaningful, I just
43:21
thought I'd rather not do it. And I feel bad about it because I
43:23
kind of I left the Inn in the lurch in doing that. But fast
43:28
forward thirty years and the Lightning Seeds are absolutely huge, certainly in the UK
43:34
his band, but it went on to next you know, let's get to
43:37
bringing Home the Ashes, because now we're up to around nineteen eighty eight.
43:40
That's when this album was. Okay, so some beautiful songs on here,
43:45
but you're not happy with is it? The sound of the album was?
43:47
Are too overproduced? What was it that you're in? Yeah? Well,
43:52
in reforming the Welsh Ones in nineteen eighty six, before recording the album,
43:58
she had Quinn, the original keyboard player, and sort of found a member
44:01
of the watst Ones. He left the band to pursue his art career because
44:06
I mentioned that he's a fine artist, and he's a brilliant, fine artist,
44:08
and I respected that I knew he was so talented he would have been
44:13
mad not to pursue his art career. But the dynamic changed, and it
44:17
was always it was always the three of us in the in the last ones,
44:21
that that was the dynamic that worked, you know, the chemistry,
44:24
the Beatles chemistry. So with Jed leaving, his classical influence left the group.
44:31
The beautiful classical sort of chords that Jed would provide left the group.
44:37
And also so it's just it's just Jerry Kelly and I now or Jim Kelly
44:43
as he changed his name too. So we start writing new songs, not
44:46
that we needed new songs. We probably had enough to record an album,
44:50
and I wish we'd done that. But the climate change, the musical climate
44:53
had changed in certainly in the UK, I don't know about in the US.
44:57
So in the UK, Margaret that was in power, greed was considered
45:02
a good thing, not a bad thing. It was all about money,
45:05
surface values dominated. So it's all about what things looked like, not about
45:10
what they were actually, you know, the ethos of things was irrelevant,
45:15
I think, I say in the book. So even lou Reid was playing
45:19
a kind of you know, a horrible Steinberger basis with no headstock on it,
45:22
just as a kind of an example of where things were at. You
45:28
know, Marky Smith from The Fall the Great, you know, the UK
45:30
kind of indie band was kind of collaborating with dance troops and was wearing ice
45:36
shadows and nice suits. You know, everything we'd stood for, the post
45:39
punk thing had stood for, was kind of changing. The producer was the
45:45
most important person now, not the band. Colossal gated snurdrons were kind of
45:50
everywhere and just a kind of inauthenticity was the new authenticity. So you know,
45:57
we resisted more than most. We tried to. We tried to retain
46:02
as much authenticity as we could. But we'd signed to Simour Stein and signed
46:07
his personally to the Sire Records, the holy Grail of record labels for two
46:12
album Fixed Deel. You know, it was an amazing an amazing couter to
46:16
pull that off. But of course, when you signed with a major label
46:20
and you take their money, it comes with caveats, and it starts quite
46:25
gently with a suggestion that you maybe you lose your UK manager and you because
46:30
you need American representation, you know, and maybe you don't let that guy
46:36
do your record sleeve as your friend that's always done them that you you get
46:39
this guy because they're really hot right now. You don't get to choose the
46:43
producer you're going to work with. Maybe the record company. You're going to
46:45
suggest someone and this guy, we think you should work with this guy because
46:50
he's just done this record with Lloyd calling the Commotions that's been a big hit.
46:53
You know you should work with these guys because they've just had a hit
46:58
with the Eurhythmics or something. And you know, you choose your battles when
47:00
you're on a major label because if you if you reject, if you push
47:06
back too firmly against them, they're going to sideline you. You know,
47:09
right they have the leverage, and they had the leverage. So we ended
47:13
up in a studio with a perfectly adequate producer, but he wasn't the right
47:19
producer for the worlsh Ones. So it sounds good, but it's kind of
47:25
it's just shiny, it's just surface. It's there's no he didn't know the
47:30
group. You see, when he was offered as to produce, he came
47:35
up to Liverpool, watched one rehearsal. He didn't make any suggestions whatsoever.
47:39
None, didn't change any arrangements, nothing. And I think we needed someone
47:45
a bit with a bit less money because this is a wealthy producer with a
47:51
little bit more of a more of an indie sensibility. I feel bad actually
47:55
when I tell the truth about my feelings about it, because it's your art.
48:00
It's not it wasn't what you envisioned in the state. Yeah, it
48:02
wasn't a statement as the artist. It's a whole different perspective. Yeah,
48:07
yeah, yeah, yeah, But but I also know how horrible that is
48:10
to Yeah, what's an example. I like Cohen's Death of a Lady's Man,
48:16
but it seems I seem to remember him not being happy with it because
48:21
it's a respect to production and he felt like it was taken off him and
48:25
all that. When I read that that kind of didn't like it, I
48:29
felt, oh, that, what does that say about my taste? You
48:31
know? So I feel bad, But you did ask me, Yeah,
48:36
I mean I wouldn't feel better. I mean I totally understand from the artist's
48:38
perspective. The artist has a whole different perspective on it. This is your
48:43
baby, this is something you take a lot of pride in and then when
48:45
it doesn't come out exactly the way you hear it in your mind, there's
48:50
I would think there's always going to be that point. What if you know,
48:52
what if you have a difference? Yea, And all the reviews here,
48:54
like just reading one of the reviews online, it says, the haunting
48:58
voice of Paul Simpson injects every track with emotional weight, whether he tries to
49:02
convey your sorrow, his icy baritone chills to the bone. Your vocal delivery.
49:07
Where did you get that from? Where did that come from? Well,
49:09
if you listen to me the earlier Welsh one, that the mark one
49:14
Wellsworth and doing that, you know, I didn't really know how to sing,
49:16
so I'm kind of shouting and straining my Oh that's quiet. And I
49:22
think when we split up and came back, I've been working with the em
49:25
Brody and I think it was working with Brody where I decided I needed a
49:30
new voice. I didn't want to stand like Paul simp of the wilst Ones.
49:35
I wanted to sound like both intern of car So I went from a
49:38
distant mic sound to a close mic you know. And I remember engineers when
49:45
I said I want to I want to really intimate close mic sound engineers kind
49:50
of struggling to accommodate that, you know, because it was quite quite sort
49:53
of deep more intimates that way. Yeah, yeah, and I kind of
49:58
I kind of like it. So it's less shouting. This is going to
50:00
sound a bit trippy, but there's there's something about I think this might have
50:05
come from an Indian kind of philosophy that your voice, so that the vibrations
50:10
of your voice, your individual sort of your vocal cords, are a sonic
50:16
description of the state of your soul, all right, So your voice conveys
50:24
who you are, and then if the words are genuine, that's that's a
50:30
powerful thing. So so my problem is bringing the answers. I don't believe
50:36
always that the words are genuine. I'm not convinced of the fall I'm suspicious.
50:42
I'm slightly suspicious of my motivation when I wrote those words. But I
50:46
think what you're talking about people's response to my voice is that they're hearing there
50:52
is something real in there. The book down Right podcast will be back after
50:55
this. Just kind of fast barding here because you did pursue some projects that
51:02
I love sky Ray, and there's some beautiful stuff there the reason I did
51:07
Sky that lasted exactly ten years, and it's quite you know, Skary is
51:12
still pretty obscure. People's still only just finding out about that now. When
51:16
the worldt One's mark too imploded, just like it had the first time,
51:21
I was so heartbroken. I just I just didn't want to sing. I
51:23
just that's it and done with this. I've got nothing to say that I
51:28
want to say enough, So I chose an instrumental form that so that lasted
51:34
ten years. And then, of course, because the last one is always
51:37
on the business, I reformed, well, I formed a new worlds Ones,
51:42
right, I am the worldst Ones. It's just me, you know,
51:45
and it has been for since the mid eighties. I put a new
51:51
band together with some some people that were all in other bands. Is like
51:53
a bit of an all star line up, and made an album called The
51:58
Coldest Winter for one hundred Years, which again, and is that actually quite
52:00
obscure. People don't know about it, getting hard to get hold of.
52:04
And at some point you realize that seven thousand miles away in the Philippines,
52:09
yeah god presidential, yeah, wild Guard, Yeah at last that squirts?
52:14
When did you this fan base had built up there. Ah, when would
52:19
it be, Probably about twenty ten something like that, a year after I
52:22
reformed the World Swans then, because that was all nine, I think,
52:24
you yeah, that's right, that's right. I bumped there's a Liverpool bank
52:30
called China Crisis, and I bumped into them in the street one day and
52:34
they be just been over to the Philippines and they said they recommended that I
52:38
go out there because I've got a real big following, and I thought they
52:42
were joking. I just thought I was like, you know, I walked
52:45
away. I was thinking of he'd been sarcastic, you know. And then
52:49
shortly afterwards a promoter got in touch with me out there and offering me like
52:53
a significant amount of money to go out there. Because I still held those
52:58
sort of old post bunk of early eighties values, I could have gone out
53:01
alone as Paul Simpton of the Weld Swans and pocketed all the money, you
53:07
know, and just played with a pickup band or something. But I didn't
53:09
want to do that, so I I took the full band that've got Ricky
53:15
namely from the bran Jonestown Massacre and Mike Mooney from who has just been playing
53:19
spiritualized. Les Pattinson, the original bass player from Echo and the Benny Men,
53:24
had been retirement ten years. This was a serious, serious band,
53:30
so we went out and had a ball in nine days in the tropics.
53:34
Except, as you know, the opening lines of my book are typical of
53:38
my loook. The Welshwans have landed in the Philippines during a category for super
53:43
typhoon. Well, the Philippines are regularly kind of hit by typhoons, but
53:49
not category four super typhoons. This is once in forty years st So now
53:53
we hadn't rehearsed because like Ricky was flying in from Lesbian where you know,
53:59
we were all coming different places. We hadn't rehearsed back in UK, so
54:04
that's why we went for nine days. We were going to land, rehearse
54:07
for three days, yell out for a few days, play the gigs,
54:10
but we couldn't because the streets were flooded. We couldn't get to a rehearsal
54:15
rooms. It was quite serious, you know, like nine people died the
54:17
first morning we were there because the c defensive had kind of broken, so
54:22
the sea was getting into the rivers so poisonous. These snakes were getting into
54:28
the streets. Wow, you know, it was it was crazy. So
54:31
you know, anyway, So after after a couple of days, you know,
54:36
we were in the center of the eye of the hurricanes. Somewhere it's
54:37
quiet and it's so colossal. This thing yellowed into a false sense of security,
54:45
you know, because everything calms down again. It's actually just about the
54:47
come back twice as bad. So yeah, anyway, so it cuts a
54:52
long story shot. We survived. We managed to rehearse enough to play the
54:57
gigs. The gigs were great and done. We did a we did a
55:00
TV show to some insane amount of people iron ninety three million people something Malaysia
55:07
and these stages area, what are you credit it to? We're getting radio
55:12
airplay and that. Yeah. Yeah, it never stopped. So I don't
55:15
I'd love I would love to actually research this and actually write about it,
55:21
because the closest I could get to what's going on in the Philippines, because
55:23
it's not just the worls ones, it's it's POSTPONK music. Some bands,
55:29
yeah yeah, some bands are huge, others aren't. I don't know what
55:32
that's about. So the biggest bands in the Cure, the Smiths, the
55:39
wils Ones, you know, kind of they're the top three maybe I think,
55:45
you know, for radio play just on the radio world. See now,
55:47
I spoke to someone who thought it might have something to do in the
55:52
war. When the Americans pulled out of the Philippines, which was their base
55:55
when they were rides in the Japanese, they left behind on the islands for
56:00
huge telecommunications towers. They just abandoned them. So they became, oh wow,
56:07
we've got these, we can We've got radio. So radio stations that
56:13
were set up in the kind of in the fifties and sixties and then in
56:17
the seventies and early eighties. So the Philippinos is a Catholic country, so
56:22
they're very religious through spiritual. They're also hugely romantic. It's just in their
56:29
DNA. There are romantic people. So when they hear the Smiths, why
56:34
kin'd of get one I Want or the Cure love song or yeah yeah,
56:39
or a welse one song, it resonates posing deeply with you. You know,
56:45
there's no I mentioned this in the book. There's no guile in the
56:46
Philippinos. It's hugely polarized. Very rich people, very poor people, more
56:51
poor people, and people obviously, so music means more to them. Now,
56:55
why why this is weird for me is so the radio in the Philippines
57:01
isn't really still the Wild West. Radio play is not logged. Musicians don't
57:07
get paid, you know, So you can be on the radio twenty four
57:12
seven in the Philippines on TV and you're not going to see any money from
57:16
it. So the only incentive to go out there is they going to play
57:22
live. You know, you'll get a fee, you can sell some merchandise
57:24
and stuff. But really even that's not a reason for me why I go
57:30
out there. It's just an incredible experience. It's good for the soul to
57:35
experience. It's very humbling to encounter Filipinos who are so grateful that you've made
57:42
the effort to fly thousands of miles to play for them. If there's a
57:45
documentarian listening to this, there's your idea, man, that's a documentary.
57:51
Well, it's a bit like what's what was the Oh his name escapes me?
57:54
What's the documentary about the guy who was living in the States and he
57:59
just goes he's huge in South Africa? He said, this kind of number
58:01
one album for oh? Is it for Sugarman or no is that Yeah,
58:07
Yeah, Yeah, that's the one. Yeah, it's yeah, it's that
58:12
kind of thing, you know, so I get I'll get band mail and
58:17
social media friend requests from the children of the people like used to write to
58:24
me. It's been passed on like a torch. You know. It's a
58:28
really unique thing. You're right. Someone should shouldn't someone should document it.
58:31
Paul Simpson's Revolutionary Spirit, a post punk exorcism. It is out now.
58:37
You can get it wherever books are sold. It's through job On Press.
58:40
And where can people find you online? Paul? I'm on Facebook and on
58:45
Twitter, which I probably monitored the most. I've got a guy ressigned as
58:49
who runs my official website just dot co dot uk, but that's more of
58:54
an archive than anything. I don't tend not to engage with it too much,
58:59
but I mean, if people are polite, I'll respond. Paul,
59:02
thanks for being on the podcast. All the best. M that's it.
59:14
It's in the books.