“He’s a fucking diva!”
Catherine AD shares her thoughts on working with Paul Draper…
“Spooky Action is quite prog-electronic – that’s what I brought to the table. The guitar on Who’s Wearing The Trousers sounds like Robert Fripp. The paradigm for our partnership probably isn’t Bowie-Eno, though: Bowie brought the songs and Eno the sonics. I work on the music and bring a consideration for lyrical content. These are more autobiographical and personal than any Paul has written. They’re about the journey he’s been on since the disintegration of Mansun.
“Paul and I had a big falling out and didn’t see each other for four or five months – the song You Don’t Really Know Someone, Til You Fall Out With Them is about our working relationship. Any partnership is going to have its difficulties. But we’ve worked together for longer than he was in Mansun, so that’s got to stand for something.
“What did I learn about Paul during our falling-out? I don’t know if I want to go there. He’s fucking difficult sometimes, as we all are. I try to make it work as best I can, but sometimes you just need a break from each other.
“I sit at the piano, he sits with a guitar, and we write songs together: ‘magic’ is the word Paul uses. We’re always pushing against each other, coming up with these inverted chords, and what comes out is this sweet, melodic thing that we don’t have when we work on our own.
“We’re Buckingham-Nicks, only without the fucking and cocaine. Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart is another good analogy – with Paul as Annie. He’s the fucking diva, I’ll tell you. He can be a bit touchy. But I wouldn’t work with him if he wasn’t great. I just focus on that when it’s difficult. I’m sure he’d say I was equally a pain in the arse. But he must need me for something.”