30 years on and their teen fans are all grown up – but Wet Wet Wet are back
...Marti Pellow & Co planning to release new album
MARTI Pellow’s smile is still as wide as in his 1980s heyday – but the face that once beamed out from thousands of posters on teenage bedroom walls is looking rather more weathered. It has now been 30 years since Wet Wet Wet released the debut album that catapulted them to fame. Along the way, the band’s singer has been, by turns, part-time painter/decorator, heart-throb, millionaire, heroin addict and West End star. Yet for all the years of success, Pellow remains selfdeprecating.
‘I have been very lucky,’ he says. ‘I’m not really that smart, but other people see things in me and draw that out of me and I love a challenge. I am not afraid to dig in and I love to work. I have a good work ethic and I respect my job.’
As the fresh-faced soul boys from Clydebank, the Wets once dominated the airwaves with breezy pop tunes and spent 15 weeks at the top of the charts with Love Is All Around.
Now Pellow, no longer the teen idol with the chiselled cheekbones, headto-toe denim and cheesy smile but still in love with his long-term partner Eileen Catterson, reveals in an exclusive interview with The Scottish Mail on Sunday how he has reunited with his former bandmates for another shot at pop fame.
The singer, who is about to celebrate his 52nd birthday, confirms they have started work on their first new album in a decade, hoping to rekindle the magic of hits such as Wishing I Was Lucky and Sweet Little Mystery.
Having worked up songs for the new album with the band’s main songwriter, bassist Graeme Clark, Pellow says: ‘I started working with Graeme a couple of months ago. We were writ1982 ing a couple of songs and laughed and joked that we are still the same. Nothing had changed.
‘We still interact in a very similar way and we are still brutally honest with each other, but the album is going great and we have some great songs coming together. I have been saying to the rest of the band, let’s get it together, so that is definitely on the cards.
‘An album is coming. In the past, we’ve had some opportunities to write some new songs for Greatest Hits albums, but this time there will be a new album.’
Now older and wiser than the spiky-haired teenager who painted houses to finance the demo tapes that landed his band their first record deal, he points out it is now three decades since the Wets’ No 1 debut album, Popped In Souled Out. A 30th anniversary edition of the album is in the pipeline, due out in October. Wet Wet Wet was formed in at Clydebank High School where Mark McLachlan changed his name to Marti Pellow (a mix of childhood nickname and his mother’s maiden name) and the band stripped down to a four-piece, including Tommy Cunningham and Neil Mitchell.
Pellow says: ‘We were 16-year old boys when we started out, all bugeyed and talking about dreams and aspirations. We weren’t financially well off, we were working class. I wouldn’t say our a**e was hanging out our trousers, but they were a bit threadbare. At least they were clean.
‘We weren’t trying to live a champagne income on a giro. We were figuring out how to save up enough money to make a demo.
‘Tommy would wash dishes in a Chinese restaurant and I was doing homers as a painter and decorator. We were unemployed and hadn’t been afforded the luxury of an apprenticeship from school, which made us focus on our music.’
A gig in Shotts Prison landed them a deal with Polygram Records. The debut single, Wishing I Was Lucky, reached No 6 in 1986. Other hits followed, including the sensational 15 weeks at the top with their 1994 cover version of The Troggs hit Love Is All Around, from the film Four Weddings And A Funeral.
But things began to unravel. In 1997, drummer Tommy Cunningham quit to start his own taxi firm after being denied an equal share of songwriting royalties.
Two years later, Pellow collapsed in London’s Conrad hotel as a result of heroin addiction.
Clark also faced drink and drugs problems. After Wet Wet Wet split in 1999, he suffered from depression and in 2001 was fined £200 for punching his wife Beverley.
Mitchell assaulted his lover Olivia Warren, 38, in a drunken rage and was barred from going within 100 yards of her. The court ordered him to take part in a domestic violence programme.
Meanwhile Pellow, forced to face his own demons, cleaned up his act with the help of recovering cocaine and alcohol addict Chris Difford of the pop group Squeeze. He hopes his successful path to sobriety can inspire other addicts.
‘It is something that is important to me, that I understand where I am at and that I am very happy with my sobriety,’ he says. ‘Everything that reverberates from that is a bonus.’ These days, work is his obsession. He is respected in theatre circles after starring roles in a number of high-profile musicals, alternating these with introspective solo albums. In 2002, he landed the part of lawyer Billy Flynn in the West End production of Chicago, which took him to Broadway. He also co-starred in Sir Tim Rice’s revival of Chess and starred in stage productions of The
I understand where I am, and I am very happy with my sobriety
Witches Of Eastwick, Jekyll & Hyde, Evita and Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds. At Christmas, he played a pantomime villain in Aladdin at Glasgow’s SEC.
This month, he returns with a new solo album, called Mysterious, and a tour of the same name that brings him to Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall on March 22.
He’s also writing a stage musical of his own, inspired by the Robert Burns poem Such A Parcel O’ Rogues In A Nation and JRR Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings. He says: ‘It’s a complex story and there are a few dark characters in there. I hope Parcel O’ Rogues sees the light of day.
‘Some songs I think aren’t quite right and I am working on the characters. There will come a time soon to let people see the musical.’ He is getting help from Jack Dempsey, the literary collaborator on JK Rowling’s hugely successful London West End show, Harry Potter & The Cursed Child.
‘Jack is a great dramatist,’ Pellow says. ‘When I first met Jack he asked me what the musical was about and it must have been quite a bizarre conversation when I told him the plot. He laughed because of my Glasgow dialect and asked me to slow down a bit as I told him what happened in each of the scenes.
‘Parcel O’ Rogues was a working title. The whole thing was inspired by Rabbie Burns and his poem. It is ever morphing. I have got back the third draft on it and I’m moving the goalposts. It is more Middle Earthy and more mystical and is coming along brilliantly.’
The other love of his life, he says, is Eileen Catterson, the former Miss Scotland model who disappeared from the public eye almost 20 years ago.
He has been engaged to her for 26 years, but the pair have not been seen together for much of that period, prompting reports that the relationship had ended.
But far from it, says the singer, who describes his long-term fiancée as the ‘special’ woman in his life before quickly changing the subject.
‘It is very much still on,’ he says, ‘It’s on. We are all good. I’m ecstatic. The relationship is brilliant.
‘Have I got someone special in my life?’ he adds with a smile. ‘Yes, I have got someone special in my life. We’re very happy.’