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don't forget on the 18th of june we'll be marking the 80th birthday of paul
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mccartney with a special word in your park in holland park some guests
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announced more being announced all the time get you tickets below
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word in your attic a zoom with a view welcome to another word in your attic
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into someone who needs absolutely no introduction and who's about to uh go out around the uk once again scaring the
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locals with the reformed public image it's the great john london john fantastic to see you
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scaring the locals carrying the locals he hopes
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are you and how are you if truth and honesty scare the locals then you know the locals i recommend
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stay in the local i'm in california at the moment yeah uh
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getting myself ready for this tour uh it's been two years now planning it we
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were supposed to do this two years ago but the coving nonsense crept in
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yeah and the anxiety now is really i mean i'm a creature that stuff suffers
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from stage fright but waiting two years now has really really nauseated me i've lost my beer
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belly with worry [Laughter] so so tell us which
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who's in public image on this uh on this tour the usual suspects that's uh bruce smear
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flew edmonds and scotty oh lou edmonds of the of the mekons lou edmonds i
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interviewed in 1978 when he was a member of the group called the edge the edge with john moss on drums
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lou is misunderstood i think somewhat of a musical genius and it's a pleasure to
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work with him i feel that about all of them but mostly because they are genuinely my friends
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and it's quite amazing after the years and years and years of animosity and uh
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chromos that i've had to put up with previous members i found that you can actually make music
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with people you like it doesn't all have to be adversity that's a wonderful wonderful new tool in
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our arsenal so what can people look forward to on this tour
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well they can look forward to their face brassic honesty and songs that deal with human emotions in a much more direct way
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an honest way a simplistic way maybe sometimes but the songs shape-shift on
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stage according to how much eye contact an audience gives me as the singer
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i will respond to their emotions and and that generosity between audience
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and band i think is the highlight of what public image is we view ourselves as a folk band
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even opera because that that's the communication of it we're trying to find the answers to
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the mystery of human emotions it's a very very hard thing to do
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because pop music has been so riddled with uh fake news
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by english endless bands it's very hard to get through that dribble if people are expecting like a fantastic light
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shows and the lights that that's not gonna happen right we when we get to a venue it all
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depends on how many light bulbs they've got over the stage beyond that we're not too considerate
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if if we're in the dark it's the music what counts
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so what's what's up as long as i can see the audience i'm rocking
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that's that's where all the energy goes and comes back from them so if you saw two shows consecutively
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would they be completely different because it sounds it sounds very good they always end up different you cannot
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do it the same night after night you you rehearse to try and get some semblance of organization in a song but
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it very very much depends on the atmosphere that each town will give you
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and so if it's a lousy gig ain't that full
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that's the point i mean when i first started in music i was very shy oh a terrible shy person i am
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and i i couldn't bear the thought of people being so close staring at me
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right but i've got over that and found that to be the most enjoyable thing that can happen
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that you're being absolutely honest and and that's really worthy of some
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serious stage fright to you to go out there mentally naked
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and and whatever happens happens but you'll be true to yourself in it and
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the songs that i write they're always always emotional one way or another
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whether i'm having a go at an institution or screaming agony at the death of my
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mother and my father these are all very relevant situations to me i don't just
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rhyme words they have to be about the life i'm experiencing and by
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sharing that with an audience they're giving that back to me that they have similar feelings and emotions
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that's a wonderful way to write music there's your inspiration right that's
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like how can i ever run out of ideas for songs when i've got such a good audience
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well it sounds like you must have missed this very greatly in the two years where you couldn't go out and play if it's such an important part you were saying
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it's the greatest greatest feeling in the world it it is it is but then again i found out other
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great feelings too is taking care of my missus who's uh suffering from alzheimer's that's this
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very sympathetic yeah that's very very serious bunch of uh of
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well you have to be occupied the whole time and you can't shake shift or daydream you have to just be
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concentrated and that was quite punishing to learn that the new regime
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was no regime at all because it's also unpredictable the tension of that
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and getting over i think the first three four months of that really has been such a learning process now that i don't
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really need more than four hours sleep a night and when i do sleep it's with one eye open because she needs attention
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yeah yeah right it's it's a very hard thing to to uh to come to grips with but when you
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truly love someone that happens it just happens you don't question it
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these are the gifts that the god has given us yeah let's play the hand
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well look we were going to ask you about um just just about some of the music you were you you you liked when you were you
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were growing up and i think we usually start with the family home which i think well for you it was near i
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was near the arsenal stadium wasn't it is that right oh yeah yeah yeah right around the corner yeah that's why i'm an
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arsenal supporter that's the first thing my dad said to me at age four support your local team
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all right and damn right and that's what you should do and you stick with that that sense of loyalty and community that
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will always be in me all right the music i was brought up on well my mum and dad were what were they
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playing can you remember what kind of stuff everything everything lots of irish music lots of early scar
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you know there's a because they're very mixed neighborhoods arsenal land
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yeah it's a extreme variety i mean i heard the kinks you really got me uh through my mum and
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dad so this is like how i love the kinks it's it's not because it fits cozily into a
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record collection it's because my mum and dad introduced it to me and it was a tough song to be playing on a dance set
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when i was young yeah absolutely my mom and dad they they wanted me to be the dj while they all huffed it with the
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neighbors oh really oh yeah yeah every friday saturday night
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so never a sunday did you have to work on monday how old were you then
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when you were the dj oh from about four or five onwards
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what did you play this is brilliant what kind of stuff everything they had right and just i
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watched them and what would like uh get them hoofing away out there you know
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because that my vision of them was waste height so i suppose i was focusing on their genitals bouncing
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when did you first buy records yourself can you remember
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sorry i can't get over that bad joke
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the one problem i had with them was the beasles i i could never get into that she loves
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you yeah yeah yeah stuff i i always i it was just something in it that was repulsive to me
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but you've got to also understand that uh pop music was a new thing
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because the bbc was the only radio and they'd play endless horrible classical
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music and i think sergeant peppers and them early bbc john peels and the rest and uh
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um radio caroline really like uh cracked the ice so anything new and different
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was exciting and my mum and dad were well into that and and uh that's where i let my appreciation of
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variety radio one did they play radio one not
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classical there it was yeah you know and it was dismal and it would ruin a day
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this is prior to having a tv no really he didn't have a tv at first
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no not until about 10 right can you see the first record you ever
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bought that's that's when a phone came in too my gosh weren't we getting modern all right even at that age we still
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didn't have an indoor toilet we'd have to use a an outdoor latrine shared with
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a local pub well that's us you know people can yak on about like poverty and
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inequality but hello try beating that one yeah there's very dangerous times to
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want to go to the toilet late at night what with all the drunks ambling in and peeing all over the place and
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it's dangerous so hence uh hence uh piss pots under the
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bed but there's another little aspect of that the steam off your wii and your number
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twos would of course creepers seep up into the mattress and cause rocks and
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that rock would of course make the iron springs because that's what mattresses were made of then
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creep up through and being into you so you're getting stabbed twice nightly by
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bed string it's a regular occurrence grief it's all right it's just that's
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life no i don't i don't think anybody around and above the daddy any better
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of course some had indoor toilets luxury but there was no snobbery and and you
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could leave doors open there'd be no burglary of theft or hatred
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and very very mixed a lot of jamaican a lot of irish
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german too an italian from the war that decided they want to
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move to england and not all of them need a jewish reader just very very mixed
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and lots of very poor english people and because i suppose there's your
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melting pot get on with it where was it were the record shops you can remember from being from that around that area
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from being young can you remember anything loved them there were two on holloway road later
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later when we moved to a finsbury park which is not too far away around the corner there was a fantastic
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record store it was a tiny little room run by a very very old white-haired lady
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exactly the kind that you would be thinking sipping tea and coughing a donut but she would play
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pure solid roots rock reggae
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you remember what it was called was it was this across the rope in prince park station but yes just by the bridge
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i remember that i remember that that really was a hole in the wall that place wasn't it it really was but the music
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she would stop was fantastic so you'd be getting that and mixed it with it's
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jimmy hendrix and you know the more madder side of metal music at that time it was great that storm
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such a variety of people all you know in there to listen to different things
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but having their brains open by this sweet little old lady who you would think should be knitting cardigans
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a terrific terrific what an eye opener what an eye eyesight and what a great
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start to life have faith in your fellow human beings don't judge by image
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can you remember the first record you bought gosh yeah it was because i loved the color of the slave it was ruby don't
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take your look oh yeah wow
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i thought my mum and dad would like it right right yeah i was i loved doing uh jobs and
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earning money to buy the clothes i wanted and and stuff so yeah i buy them little gifts like that
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later on of course as i earn more they started demanding percentages
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oh parents are very unforgiving
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just records wrecker's records i i've saved up enough to buy my own record player by 11.
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which was an old amstrad amp with uh i think they were wolfdale speakers and
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i moved up to tannoy's and then i wanted bigger and bigger ramps and of course mum and dad weren't
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quite appreciating my uh musical adventures by that point but
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there was a good little reminder there i told alice about this too alice cooper my mum loved
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him she thought it was great fun just really got into like that the
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hilarity and i suppose the the theater of it she seen no harm in it at all
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who was the first band you saw can you remember live yeah oh my god oh live the first person
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i ever saw was cliff richards uh prior to it being the rainbow in
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shinsbury park when it was yeah how did that happen who did you go with my mom and dad
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they took me yeah uh we were up in the balcony and i couldn't hear any anything
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at all of him just girls screaming and my young ears couldn't take it it was
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awful i i couldn't figure out why these girls were screaming
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ah late developer so that was in the 60s it's just that
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wall of sound and screaming so i'm very very in tune with like uh but uh you
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know i was only what six at the time we'll say uh no even younger
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but i appreciate now looking back when people talk about the beatles and and how the girls screaming and how new that
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was so it i just i've got i've got connections to it
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and so it's a very interesting for me and my record collection really comes from really the start of modern
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music right when the radios switch from classical to to pop
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and uh because they they deliberately ignored rock and roll didn't they so you know my rock and roll stuff was
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really got through mum and dad by you know little richard and
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you know the sad end of elvis they loved all the the cry baby ones
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heartbreak hotel oh my god that's pure genius
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did you get into what might be called prague progressive rock and so forth yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
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what sort of thing you're a big you're a big peter hamill admiral weren't you a van de graaff generator yeah well until they put a
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book out and said that they influenced the sex pistols
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didn't make getting that wrong no i tell you that the frog bands at the
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time were atomic rooster all right i really like them vincent crane i saw him
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several times brilliant yeah those keyboard solos edgar broughton oh wow
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well they were local boys they were a bit hooligan they were
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definitely not for the hippies i remember the album cover that really drew my attention to them and it was
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just racks of the meat yes oh yeah the hanging
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fantastic the peace brigade absolutely wanted to kill him [Laughter]
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and they were really good live plenty of diversity in them
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and that as i've had all this is before lead guitar solo time [Applause]
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i i i switched off because i i just couldn't bear that that what i call
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cockrock it was nonsense
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what kind of glam you are you talking about you know just bowling sweets
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the faces they were quite good you know they were great fun live because they were complete chaos right kicking
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footballs into the crowd yeah i just got out of june careless
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you know and in many ways reflecting the fun of the audience because i mean we were just as inebriated
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remember you've got irish blood in me we start young
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yes we loved t-rex those those productions were
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incredible you know bang it go get it on oh god electric
19:38
warrior that album i think is an absolute stunner
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but then i love slider too when people were being snobby and said uh that he
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was going into just teenybop it's like listen to what he's saying there
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so yeah very very there was never an audience more betrayed than the tyrannosaurus rex audience when he
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turned into t-rex they were multiple i was ever so
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when i moved out of home oddly enough uh steve took was squatting in the idea
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in the house opposite when me and sid was squatting in in hampstead clearly so
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yeah yeah it was lovely to hear him [ __ ] while playing his bongos about not
20:28
being good enough anymore of course he was the first he was the
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first one wasn't he then he was mickey finn wasn't it yeah that's it
20:40
and god i get the names hmm loved it
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i mean you you're trying to get all this out of me brain and it comes the way i think again i'm a little
20:53
bit confused because i'm hyper excited now i love music i [ __ ] love it i've
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got a hell of a lot more records than that other fellas got behind him
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yeah do you know i had uh i had to have the joy uh the ceiling in my house
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um uh steel bard rsjs
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because of the weight of the records but i love records i i i'm tactile in
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that way i like the feel of them i like putting them on i don't like fingerprints on them
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i i like maintaining and caring for them it's the same way i do with books by the way do you keep them in alphabetical
21:40
order no nobody can how do you how do you keep
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them go on recently played all the way down to not so race okay
21:53
so if you wanted to if you suddenly thought i want to hear atomic rooster which surely
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there's very few records i ever deleted from my collection yeah i just love them
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uh and i i can find the good in everything you know hence the alvin stardust albums
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so what's your current favorite oh i don't have one at the moment i'm
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trying to write new material and uh you just don't go there you don't you don't
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you find that's best not to yeah just just dig into your own experiences
22:36
because you could be subliminally uh misled hello
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and and i don't want that no no i don't like much modern stuff anyway it's very very fake news
22:48
so there must be some acts that you really that really did have an impact on your songwriting though or some lyricists
22:55
oh roy orbison horace andy
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uh oh what's that other bloke a boxer again that lovely sweet voice that i can't
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sound anything like so even if i tried to write a song in that vein it won't
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sound like it folks then i could get up maybe murder chris
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isaacs that's it all right i was never going to guess that hurry sandy chris eiser wow yeah
23:28
i i like that that pitch they have that tone it's something that i can't find inside myself but then again
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why should i i shouldn't be imitating somebody else's life yeah but it's just it's a good it's good
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to listen to that stuff every now and again yeah there's as much as anything [ __ ]
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like a much more distracting like uh what i mean again one of my favorite
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records of all time it is uh the portsmouth sinfonia by eno yeah
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hideous with mike rutledge of the soft machine playing clarinet yeah it's just almost there and that
24:08
knife edge of all of near collapse is so terrifying and
24:15
refreshing and in that vein i put captain bifar trap mask replica absolute stunner of an album
24:23
let's get quite a few things like that oh neil young zuma oh these lovely
24:28
guitar parts but they're almost about to fall apart um
24:33
i love that tension you listen to trap last regular this
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afternoon how weird
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yeah he's the vocal is phoned in isn't it on the phone from frank's own house or something it's extraordinary
25:04
hilarious it's so deeply rewarding
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because it just it lets your mind flow like you just said you you can imagine the characters this is revolving around
25:17
it's very much like i'd suppose a pinter play for that yeah yeah yeah yeah
25:23
you always said you loved the kate bush album the kick inside oh
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it's fantastic because she's absolutely original and when i had first heard that
25:35
these cliffs it's right up there
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it kind of frightened me and then i found she was opening us up to a whole new range of emotions
25:51
and and i just fell in love with that absolutely
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missed alive never ever seen alive yeah do you ever meet her
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oh yeah yeah yeah had a really interesting meeting with her
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once um went out to her house in the middle of god knows where
26:12
there's old georgian thing endless fields and lawns to drive
26:18
through in the middle of the night to get there i brought nora and we went out for dinner but it was about uh
26:25
writing a song together and by the time i got round to writing it she just thought i was a little bit
26:32
insane i called the song bird in hand and it was about rescuing parrots from the illegal paris
26:40
smuggling from south america into florida i just imagine they're going yes let's
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do it that sounds commercial yeah well it's kind of clever though
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all right because i knew i couldn't match her her range right so i'd have
to be finding something else and i thought
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you know what john if you really listen to yourself you sound a bit like a parrot
27:06
so that would be my part ah okay please rescue me
27:12
from this illegal parrot importation
27:17
and then she could give it the cliff over the top i'm mortified this never happened
27:23
i know well it's happened now we've heard it as now
27:28
i i was more mortified because she ended up doing a duo which sting which amounted to not very much
27:37
so look we we traditionally finished these chats by asking people to tell us what's the
27:44
best record ever made but do you have an answer to that question
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i don't think it's possible okay give us some possible way to wait the
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way we are as human beings you cannot restrict yourself to one set of emotions
28:01
you as a a normal day flies by you go in and out of different moods requiring
28:06
different different backdrops to keep you alive so the idea of a
28:12
desert island disc list i've always found really impossible because by the
28:17
time i give you that like my top five or my top one even i've changed my mind no
28:22
that's very we're all the same we feel different every day but are there any that have just never let you the only records that never let you down
28:30
oh there was one album that let me down quintessence [Laughter]
28:38
i saw quintessence at the guilford civic hall i i saw them support the who and the small
28:44
faces at the oval oh my god they wouldn't have fared very well they were they were shocking but it
28:50
was a squeaky floatiest the flu player the flu player i had two members of the
28:55
man was sitting on satin cushions yes yeah yeah yeah all of that but look i'm
29:01
interested you know and so i bought an album thinking you know it must be more to this and so
29:08
bingo there wasn't it was worse than i did heard it
29:14
this is good david said the greatest threat we're going to change this
29:19
grievously disappointing record no no you won't get much opposition on
29:26
that score yeah and i'll tell you one thing i did love was the um do you remember the
29:32
macbeth movie oh the third ear band yes
29:38
i love the landscapes they created and i think that years later that's kind of um
29:45
there's a shadow of that in things like enya yeah yeah and many other things and i still
29:52
wallow in that yellow i really love that band live they they play some really interesting
29:59
things and the other one causes the groundhogs and greninja log
30:06
these are my people oh yeah thank you for the bomb by the
30:11
groundhogs sure the cover too the cartoon cover oh god bang
30:18
the groundhogs are so loud lives but then so were the pink fairies and i
30:24
i loved them love the pink fairies live
30:30
and so you know when people go anybody hear early influences of punk and they'll name a whole load of american
30:36
bands but they're not quite aware we didn't know much about american bands so we had a very strong culture of our own thank you
30:46
fair enough i just thought i'd say that for the troops yeah can we ask you about there's a sex
30:52
pistols uh [Music] the original record is coming coming out is that does that incur great
30:57
displeasure no there's a small release of god save the queen which i i think that's kind of
31:04
somewhat appropriate yes but all the rest of it you know uh what happened after a really wicked court
31:11
case where a disney corporation decided to go up against me this is the
31:24
nobody's offered me anything i have no idea what the script is i don't know how these actors were appointed all this was
31:31
done at least a year to three in the making behind my back without any
31:36
attention to me yet in that they're using well everything i gave them
31:42
as as a band they did nothing before me and as people they've done even less
31:49
since so of course i'm upset about that i i think they're going to rubbish
31:55
everything that was good about that fan by turning it into a cheap
badly made
32:02
merchandise uh the cat ends all the stuff that for
32:07
years and years and years i was protecting them from right trying to maintain a high standard
32:13
if we release things they'd be properly boxed proper information that keep the price down make sure
32:20
they're damn good recordings yeah all of that now is it they're indifferent
32:26
they're up for the money like some cheap kiss me quick hats on a seaside stall
32:33
you know except the kiss is blurry okay
32:38
it's details in life that matter and you cannot disrespect your audience
32:44
it's not only me but they've just completely disrespected all of that original audience
32:51
in in the guise of going for a new set of fans well what new set of fans want
32:58
to know that the man who wrote the songs has been ostrich ostracized ostriched
33:05
from the product it's really really stupid
33:10
so i suppose they're selling fake here's the new fake the rock and roll swindle
33:15
all over again you know which i i won the previous court case with so no matter what now
33:22
i'm not responsible and there's some pretty terrible terrible merchandise
33:27
ideas that are going to come out and i want the world to know that that's not me it's not me
33:34
yeah well that's very understandable
33:39
a lot a lot of this stuff well it has sexual connotations that are
33:47
dubious at best and so they've gone for like uh
33:52
the wrong end of things just to be sensational yeah and i think there's much more
33:58
quality to the pistols than that well that's totally understood and uh
34:05
it's john's been fantastic to talk to you been really brilliant thank you so much oh you're just saying that no not
34:12
remotely it was really entertaining i'll tell you again well just before you
34:17
go one of my all-time favorites is called bg's box set because because i love the bgs right but
34:25
i always wanted that collection of singles in in the the
34:30
mid to late 60s that they put out that were just incredible
34:36
that mining disaster yeah everything around there brilliant
34:42
done it all right so there you go haha not so bad after all huh
34:50
i don't know yes [Laughter]
35:00
word in your attic a zoom with a view
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