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12.07.13 Music Week 23
press afterwards and said we should have won it, which was very nice of him. He hadn’t heard anything about us, didn’t know who we were. He told us they got the album up on Spotify on the way down in the van to the Ivors, listened to it, then all looked at each other and said: ‘These guys have it.’ That was a lovely thing to say.
Would you say that TDLM make silly music? NH:Not exactly. We walk a fine line that The Divine Comedy also tread: is it meant to be humour or is it just meant to be just good music? In the best novels, there is always an element of humour. It’s a very important part of life. And to have something that doesn’t contain any humour at all doesn’t seem realistic to me.
TW:What’s annoying to me is that there’s so much music out there now that’s so ultra-serious - even music that’s aimed at kids. Po-faced, ridiculous stuff. I’m a big Crowded House fan and they were always so much fun, and brilliant with it.
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NH: You used to see so much silly shit on Top Of The Pops that’s now accepted as classic pop music. All the fun seems to have gone. I feel sorry for kids.
TW: People say there used to be a lot of shit in the charts, and you look back and, well, there was a lot of shit. But at least it made you smile.
NH: Look at Dave Hill from Slade. He was smiling because he knew he looked like an idiot, but they were having so much fun.
TW: Slade are one of the most revered and successful bands of all time in England - but they’re not quite up there with [the Beatles, Stones etc] because they had so much fun. I totally believe that. You’re not allowed to have fun. It’s the same with Quo. By the way, if anyone can get me a copy of Spare Parts by Quo on vinyl out there - released in 1969 - I’d marry you.
Why is pop so serious? NH: X-Factor. I blame X-Factor for everything. Coldplay also have a lot to answer for.
TW: I think there’s more money in depression and angst. [The industry] knows kids suffer with certain things, and there’s a lot of ‘make him look like he’s suffering too’. There’s gold in them there tears.
You’ve set up your own label, Divine Comedy Records. How much freedom do you have without an A&R exec on your case? NH: I love it precisely because of that. I’m not sure my manager Natalie [de Pace] does, because she has to run the bloody thing. Please mention her - she works her bleedin’ arse off… Actually perhaps don’t write ‘bleedin’ arse’ - that’s no good! Natalie’s been my manager since 1996, the only one I’ve ever had, and I really wouldn’t still be here doing this if it wasn’t for her. She’s brilliant - I really mean that. To answer your question, I never took any notice
of record companies in the old days anyway. They used to tell me what to do and I’d just tend to do what I wanted regardless. But in a way because you’re investing your own money in [your label] it rather concentrates the mind about budgets, videos
and such like. I was never a big budget guy - except maybe with a few orchestras. You don’t waste time when you’re paying for it. And it’s wonderful to know that you can go in, write what you want and whatever happens, it will be released. Nobody will say anything to you. Whether it sells or not is another matter.
“I realise the record companies I was on before were just trying to do the right thing - but sometimes they were trying to do the right thing for themselves and not for me” NEIL HANNON, DUCKWORTH LEWS
TW: Artists can get it wrong as much as anyone, but it always annoys me when people think they know how this business works. Because no-one does. No-one has a clue.
NH: It’s funny how the business has gone. It’s been a double-edged sword. Obviously we’d all like more records to be sold, but it’s allowed bands to have a certain freedom that they wouldn’t otherwise. In the old days, they’d have been dropped and that would have been it for their career.
You might not get paid as ten years ago, but Paulo Nutini can play your record on the way to the Ivors… NH:That’s true, there is instant access. I wonder if he paid for it? Spotify need to increase their payments [to artists] just a wee bit. A friend of a friend who’s a comedian got like £30,000 off Spotify. I was gobsmacked. How?!
We’ve been told Spotify has just licensed official Playboy sex noises. True story. NH: Is that the name of a band? [Laughs]
TW: You’ll see people with the headphones in on the way to work, thinking it’s Tchaikovsky. It’s not. It’s people shagging.
Do you think Sticky Wickets could become a future Ivor Novello winner? NH: If I’m on the jury. That’s reminded me of one of the most embarrassing moments of my life: I was
Sticky Wickets: The Duckworth Lewis Method’s second album is out now. They begin a UK tour in September:
dlmethod.co.uk
actually on that [Ivor jury] one year, with Gary Barlow, would you believe - before his reincarnation as ‘Sir Gary Barlow’.
TW: The greatest songwriter of all times.
NH: At one point I had to leave the room due to a ‘conflict’ - which meant it was one of my songs [being considered]. And when I came back in, there were a lot of awkward glances. I thought: ‘You fuckers! You haven’t put it in!’ It was an interesting peek into that world as how these decisions are made… I have a feeling that by telling that story, I might have just blown our chances this year.
TW: You haven’t, you haven’t. Because if you have, I’ll fucking kill you.
Are you allowing yourselves any ambitions at all for this new record? NH:No, we just live in hope.
TW: Sod that. I want to win an Ivor Novello. I want to put one right in the middle of my pile of stuff at home. Realistically, we can’t have any visions for this kind of madness. But we were very proud of the first one and we’ve come up with a follow-up that’s not just run-of-the-mill.
NH: It’s got some really good tracks. Our primary objective has been achieved already, in that we’ve got tickets to a test match out of it.
The Word Magazine was a big champion of the last record before it closed. Do you miss it? TW: Word loved it, but they weren’t our only champions, they were one of many - which I’m very proud of. I miss The Word because it was a great magazine. Mark [Ellen] and David [Hepworth] should always be involved in the music media because they invented a genre in my view with Q and everything else they’ve done.
Neil, has running your own label made you at all empathetic to the way you were perhaps treated by Parlophone in the past? NH: [Long pause] Nah, not really. To be honest, I realise the two record companies I was on before DCR were just trying to do the right thing. But sometimes they try to do the right thing for the whole company rather than just you. So with Setanta there was a little too much cross- collaterilsation, shall we say. I benefitted from it at the start and was a victim of it towards the end. It did mean we ended up owning our entire Setanta back catalogue, so there was an upside. At Parlophone, there was a little bit of that thing of a major label chucking money at us, and we went: ‘Okay, we’ll spend your money for you if you really want us to.’ And boy, we did. But as a result, we never recouped on the three albums we were there for [laughs]. You can’t really blame the band for spending money offered to them. We saw the way the wind was blowing, so we jumped before we were pushed. I have no regrets about any of it. I think most bands have similar experiences. I don’t know of any artist who says theirs is the best label on the planet, they love them and they do everything right… unless they own it themselves.
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