35 years together, but Marti says I quit quit quit
THEY are the band that launched his career – and helped to revive it, too.
But yesterday Marti Pellow announced he was leaving Wet Wet Wet 30 years after they found fame to concentrate on his solo career.
The 52-year-old said it was ‘not fair’ on fans or his bandmates to stay in the group when his focus was elsewhere.
The band, from Clydebank, Dunbartonshire, were hugely successful in the 1980s and 1990s, spending 15 consecutive weeks at number one in 1994 with their cover of The Troggs’ single Love Is All Around.
However, they have released only two
‘Spending more time on solo work’
albums of new material in the past 20 years. And while Pellow’s departure disappointed hardcore fans, he stopped short of ruling out a future reunion.
A statement from his spokesman said the singer had probably played his last concert with Wet Wet Wet, ‘at least for the foreseeable future’.
Nor is it the first time Pellow has quit the band. He did so in 1999 after ‘moving on’ and signing a solo deal, but was back by 2004.
Yesterday’s announcement follows three Wet Wet Wet concerts – the last one at Edinburgh Castle earlier this month – to celebrate the band’s 30th anniversary.
Pellow told fans: ‘I will be spending more time on my solo work – performing concerts, acting and my own songwriting. As an artist I feel a lot more settled in this world. I have had a great time and loved my career with Wet Wet Wet and to me they will always be the best band in the world.
‘When I started in Wet Wet Wet I gave it 100 per cent of my heart and soul and that’s what it demands and that is also what the fans demand – and if I can’t do that because my focus is elsewhere, then this is not fair on the fans or the rest of the guys in the band.’
Pellow is writing a stage musical with his long-term music collaborator and producer, Grant Mitchell, and playwright Jack Bradley.
Wet Wet Wet was formed in 1982 while Pellow, drummer Tommy Cunningham, bassist Graeme Clark and keyboard player Neil Mitchell were at Clydebank High School. They became one of Scotland’s most successful bands, selling more than three million copies of their 1987 debut album Popped In Souled Out and enjoying a string of hits including Wishing I Was Lucky.
But by 1996 Pellow had turned to heroin and, after an overdose in a Chelsea hotel, realised his life was in peril.
He recalled: ‘I was lucky enough to have that conversation with myself: “Marti, this could go either way”. I knew where it was going.’
He checked in to The Priory in 1999 and insists he has been clean and sober ever since.
Pellow also became a Broadway and UK theatre star, and in 2011 released an album of love songs called Love to Love.