THE BOO RADLEYS
I knew I was a fan of Merseyside’s The Boo Radleys as a kid, but after sorting through a photo dump of images from my mum of myself as a teenager recently, I think I might have liked them even more than that. I appear to be wearing a Boo Radleys t-shirt in almost all of them! I think I’m 15-years-old here.
The songwriter in that band, Martin Carr, was, is and I imagine always will be, one of my favourite songwriters. I am thrilled to learn he’s working on a new record under his own name. I am disappointed that he currently has no label. Can we fix that please? Here’s a chat I had with him recently.
Hey Martin. The beginning seems like a good place to start. The Boo Radleys’ debut album Ichabod and I comes out in 1990, on Action Records. I can’t find much about Action Records on the internet - can you tell me more?
“Action Records is in Preston, it's a record shop that started putting out records. We met them through an amazing band called the Dandelion Adventure who we had befriended at a gig. They took us on tour with them and all of a sudden we were in the middle of the noisenik scene that John Robb describes in his Death To Trad Rock book. We played and hung out with bands like Archbishop Kebab, Dawson, AC Temple and the like. They were nothing like us but then again they were nothing like each other. We didn't play with a band like us until we supported Slowdive in Hampstead, 1990.”
Oh wow.
“The Dandelion Adventure gave our demo to Gordon [Gibson] at Action who agreed to put it out. We ended up recording it in Manchester for some reason. The engineer had never recorded a band like us before so it's a weird sounding record, and not good weird either. We played everything much too fast and I couldn't get my feedback parts to work. There was something about the live room that stopped it coming through - it squeaked and parped but no feedback. I was gutted but we only had a couple of days so I had to get on with it. We had done some recording and I know Gordon thought the demos were better than the LP and he's probably right. He wanted to re-release it after we started selling records but, as much as I wanted to help him out, I think it's a pile of shit.”
The songs are great though. I think that’s unarguable. In fact, I think you have a knack with melody which is quite unlike anyone of your era. What do you attribute that to?
“I've always loved melody. I think ‘Greensleeves’ was my first jam. It's simple, but filled with romance and melancholia - later, when I first heard The Beatles, I was well primed! The Beatles added excitement, a formative buzz for me. Sometimes I'm sick of myself and I'll try and write something angular but it doesn't happen. Musically it can, but not vocally. I've concentrated more on melody than on lyrics over the years and I think that was a mistake. The words are what counts, melody is dressing.”
That’s an interesting take. Still, despite being disappointed with the first record, you quite quickly sign to Rough Trade, release a handful of EP’s - and then the label goes bust…
“Rough Trade had heard us on John Peel and came down to a couple of shows. I remember walking down Kentish Town Road before a gig in 1990. I was looking for somewhere to buy fags and Geoff Travis came wobbling by on a bicycle. “The revolution is mobile!” he yelled before wobbling off into the back of a bus. We made an album for them but then they went bust again. Creation picked it up because our manager [Richard Hermitage] also managed Slowdive.”
That record is Everything’s Alright Forever, which I love. But I’ve always considered your true Creation debut to be your masterpiece, 1993’s Giant Steps.
“I’m not sure I can think of anything new to say about Giant Steps. I’ve talked about it so much. We recorded at Protocol Studios, behind Holloway Road, off Benwell Road. We spent an awful lot of time laughing. There were hardly any drugs around then - we were skint. We were stuck with 2D vision and our main vice was a couple of pints of Dog Bolter in the Firkin pub on Holloway Road or a Massala in the Standard curry house opposite. We used to have sausage butties from Bert's Cafe on the corner of Holloway Road and Drayton Park. Bert used to drop sausages then pick them up and put them in your buttie. Every night we would stop for Coronation Street and have a Kung Po and then get stuck into Pot Noodles, Pop Tarts and Crunchie Bars, Marlboro reds, strong, sweet coffee, Dog Bolter and Stella. We were going through a healthy phase. Sice gave up smoking. The music? I don't remember much to be honest, I thought we were doing something really good but I wasn't sure anybody would notice.”
I’m jumping forward a bit, but it’s 1995. I am 15-years-old and having the summer of my life, thanks in part to the release of ‘Wake Up Boo!’ in February and Wake Up! in March…
“I can't think about those times properly. I really needed help mentally but I was too drunk and stubborn to ask for it and nobody else seemed to notice. I felt like I had been possessed by this fucking idiot, constantly making a fool of himself. I was stuck in Preston while all my mates were in London but I was paralysed. I couldn't make decisions, couldn't leave, didn't see anyone for weeks. I kept dying my hair and buying stupid clothes. I was listening to Wu-Tang Clan a lot. I didn't have much interest in Britpop. I didn't realise it was a thing until Facebook and Twitter years later. I had thought it was a London thing. I dunno, I was 27, I'm not sure it was aimed at me. I became a teenager in 1981, that was my era.”
Did you enjoy anything about that time?
“I did enjoy it up to an extent. We were very busy with promo and gigs but the drink and drugs started to get out of hand. I wasn't sleeping much. We did Top of the Pops which was a real dream come true, even though the actual recording was long and boring. First time we did it our plugger arrived in a car with Stevie Wonder. He told us that Stevie had been singing ‘Wake Up Boo!’ on the way in. I choose to believe him.”
What does having a Number One album feel like?
“I think the problem, for me anyway, is that in that instant, nothing changes. I was always looking for the thing that would change me, a new friend or a drug or booze. Once I was in the NME I thought anyone can do this, same with Top Of The Pops and having a Number One. If I could do it, it wasn't worth anything. I had a lot of problems then, actually just one, undiagnosed, problem.”
You know I have OCD. I think ADHD and OCD, while on different lines, are certainly part of the same neurodiverse transport system. Hey, what's your principal memory of Creation?
“We joined when they were still in Hackney, above a sweat shop. It was a dream for me, I loved Creation Records. The problem started when they moved to Primrose Hill which wasn't far from where I lived. I went in nearly every day and nobody could understand why. I was just getting in the way. Truth is I was desperately lonely and miserable. I just wanted to get drunk and forget everything. I would go from desk to desk trying to cajole someone into going to the pub. I was a bloody nuisance.”
Label boss Alan McGee called 'Wake Up Boo!' an 'atrocity exhibition' and that you'd lost the label 'about a million pounds'. A strange way to talk about a band who delivered a Number One album…
“‘Wake Up Boo!’ is OK. The lyrics are awful but I'm always surprised by how muscular it sounds. That song stops me from having to go back to an office. I'm very lucky. McGee liked it at first but changed his mind. I don't really care what he thinks.”
Sticking with the madness/unrestrained optimism of the era, in September 1995, you - Blur, Oasis, Radiohead, Portishead, every name that meant anything in the mid-1990’s - unite for a completion album called The Help Album, which will raise money for the charity War Child…
“We got the call and we did it. I remember turning up at the studio and I had an awful hangover. I was in the pub toilets next door when the film crew arrived. I had only just written the song so I had to show it to the others before we started. I don't think we had finished when the cameras left so we're miming our video along to a half-finished track.”
You follow your Britpop record with a strange art.rock one, in 1996, with C’mon Kids. It’s probably my favourite Boo Radleys record. Was it a conscious attempt to surgically remove yourselves from the former?
“The main thing I wanted to do was have just the four of us playing. No string or horn sections. I don't think we were trying to get away from Wake Up! for the reason you say, we were getting away from it because that's what we did. We mixed it in Boston, at Fort Apache. We rang around bars in the area trying to find somewhere to watch football and ended up in an irish bar watching that Liverpool v Newcastle game at Anfield!”
You make your final album in 1998. It’s called Kingsize. It’s great. Then you split.
“I was fed up. I knew Sice had been fed up for a while too. I had decided to quit halfway through recording Kingsize while on holiday in Morocco. I don't remember when it was that we finally said it out loud but Sice picked me up and we drove down to Liverpool for a band meeting. We stopped off at Sice's mum's house and sat in the kitchen where we had sat plotting our future years before. We were so nervous we couldn't stop laughing. We had the meeting, told the band and it was as miserable as you can imagine. I wasn't thinking about how they were going to fare or what they would do for money. I feel guilty about that now but I just wanted to leave and do something else.”
This is sad. But wait… there’s more?
“We drove home to London and as we turned onto my road John Peel played ‘The Old Newsstand At Hamilton Square’. Sice pulled over and we listened in silence. There was another dimension to it for me. I had written that song because I had read a review of an Elvis album by Peel where he mentioned the newsstand and how he used to buy his NME there. I worked just off Hamilton Square and used to buy NME from the same newsstand. That gave me the idea for the song.”
You kept making music, which I’ll get to imminently. But Sice dropped almost completely off the radar.
“He wrote a few books. The best one, Thimblerigger, is out there somewhere. It's very good. He's made an album as Paperlung and he's got a record coming out soon. He went back to his studies and is now a psychiatrist.”
You did the Bravecaptain stuff. I thought those songs were typically great. I also thought that you deserved more industry support than you got. Was it difficult to keep that going?
“Yeah. The first records weren't very good. I had wanted to do something completely different but I was a complete state at this point so I ended up drifting into doing what I had already been doing but without a good band and singer. I started to get into it and made 2 or 3 albums that I really like. The last one, Distractions, was in 2005. I had to give it away for nothing. The last album I did, [2017’s third solo album] New Shapes of Life, is the best record I've made since the band split. I think it's better than Kingsize but that's me.”
I’m so pleased you’re still making music. I don't feel like I know many people so obviously consumed by music as you. Do you still love it as much as you did at the beginning?
“I do love music but I don't like more stuff than I do like. I like to listen to Tom Ravenscroft, [Stuart] Maconie's Freak Zone show, Gilles Peterson and Gideon Coe. Whatever my taste in music is, I can usually find it there. I stopped going to gigs in the early 1990’s. If I did go it was to stand at the bar. I don't like to be around that many people. I find it confusing. I don't consider myself to be part of any industry. I'm an artist. If I need to use it I will but I don't feel like I'm part of something bigger.”
So, I saw recently that Sice the other guys in the band [bassist Timothy Brown and drummer Rob Cieka] were going to be doing some shows under the name Sice Boo & The Radleys…
“Have they announced anything? Anyway, they did it, they didn’t ask me to be involved and I’m fine with that.”
Okay, but what’s next for Martin Carr?
“I'm writing songs at the minute. I've gone back to the old ways, a guitar and a bit of paper. My ADHD meds are helping me focus for longer so I'm spending more time on them and they're sounding great. I don't have a label at the minute so I don't know when I'll have stuff coming out next. I don't know why I do it - the last one did nothing and I had a breakdown doing it. I know, let’s do another!”