MIKE AND HIS BOLT FROM THE BLUE
MIKE Scott and his band The Waterboys have been on a fascinating journey ever since he emerged from Edinburgh in the late 70s. He has charted the hit Big Music, reinvented folk rock with Fisherman’s Blues, played with Bob Dylan and seen songs such as The Whole of the Moon and How Long Will I Love You (a recent smash for Ellie Goulding) become classics. But Mike is not one to rest on his laurels and his new love for hip hop loops and samples colour songs on new Waterboys double album Out of All This Blue. His new Japanese wife, artist Megumi Igarashi, inspires some of his most eloquent love songs. And writing songs for Lila, four, his daughter from a previous relationship, also drives him on. Mike said: “It means my creative engine is running all the time. I’m making songs up all day long about what’s going on, it could be the dinner cooking, or putting shoes on the wrong way round – something silly but it means I’m writing and it’s only a short jump from that to writing a pop song.”
After recreating the work of his adopted homeland’s most celebrated poet in Appointment With Mr Yeats, and bringing a unique Waterboys twist to country soul on the Nashville-recorded Modern Blues, Out of All This Blue was mostly created on a computer in the Dublin studio space he shares with Megumi.
He said: “I’m really glad it worked out as it did. I love working on my own, I made the early Waterboys albums and a few others like that.
“I love just trusting my own judgment and seeing where it takes me. I didn’t miss anything.”
The album is loaded with future Waterboys classics – such as New York I Love You and The Hammerhead Bar (an eye-popping re-imagining of the drinking den in Who bassist John Entwistle’s mansion). ● Out Of All This Blue is out next Friday.