“So debauched they threw Aldous Huxley out!”
Mick Head talks to Keith Cameron.
It’s nearly five years since Adiós Señor Pussycat. How’s the journey been?
“Up and down, personally, but songs were always getting written. We started getting some money together, with a view to going into Bill [Ryder-Jones]’s studio, and we were doing gigs. I was drinking… but we got six tracks down, and they sounded brilliant. Circumstances happened, shit happened in life, and then obviously, lockdown – I didn’t see the lads in the band, we didn’t even communicate. I was getting sober, kept writing. Then when we got back together 18 months later, I’d got sober, and because they’re such beautiful, talented, grounded young men, it was like nothing had changed, everything clicked. Then we were going out to West Kirby to finish the album with Bill.”
What’s the resonance behind the LP title?
“About 15 years ago, a friend gave me the Pat Hobby short stories, and I hadn’t really read any Scott Fitzgerald but I thought these are amazing. Then I got to know more about him as a person, and the documentary that Jay McInerney made was fascinating, because I was brought up on Hollywood black and white movies. Scott was king of the Jazz Age and he wanted to crack this new medium, because his friends like Faulkner and James Agee were getting movie credits. The poignancy of when he writes these postcards to himself says a lot about his frame of mind. Scott was sober when he was in Hollywood and there was a lot of excess around him. Some of his letters to his publishers, he’s so honest. That drew me to him.”
Trying to stay sober and work while surrounded by misbehaviour – could you relate to that?
“Yeah, completely. Unfortunately, he didn’t take long to come off the wagon. The Garden Of Allah hotel is fascinating in itself. The debauchery was so heavy that they even threw Aldous Huxley out, which is saying something!”
What kind of producer is Bill Ryder-Jones?
“Well, he’s a beautiful person. Just so lovely. Laid-back, grounded. And then you get Bill – his playing, his guitar-playing, his pianoplaying, his ideas for orchestration. He was so in tune with where the songs needed to go. You can’t ask for more than that.”
A lot of your songs are ostensibly character studies – are you in there too?
“Fluke is about a girl who works in PR, sitting on the toilet at the airport debating whether to put her phone down the grid outside so she can get on the plane. Whereas, Streets Of Kenny, I wrote that on the spot, about me. So I do write fact and fiction. Songwriting’s an art form – you’re cramming a short story into three minutes 50. I think that’s why I’ve naturally evolved into writing short stories. Which I’m enjoying at the moment, a publisher asked me last year to do a book. It was good, finishing the album and having something else to do, because I do love writing. And cycling! Clears your head and your soul.”