RiYL

Episode 665: Duglas Stewart (BMX Bandits)

Dreamers On The Run marks BMX Bandits' 12th LP since the group was founded in the mid-80s. The record finds Duglas Stewart expanding his musical ambitions a 10 years after he began work on the project. The intervening decade was difficult on both Stewart and the world at large, making this latest release a true triumph for one of Scotland's most enduring indie pop acts.

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Duration:: 48m
Broadcast on:: 10 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

[Music] Yeah, I mean, I think some people who just, you know, they don't like the whole genre of popular music. And then, you know, they just listen to classical music or just listen to, you know, jazz or whatever. They're going to sort of get it, but I think if you like popular music and you've no appreciation for the deals, I am slightly suspected. I know that you're, like myself, are a big Beach Boys fan and it's been nice seeing them. I think they've been having a bit of a renaissance over the past, you know, decade or two. Yeah, definitely. Um, I mean, of course, for now, you know, sad news about, um, Brian being diagnosed with dementia. But I do think the people, because I know some people are quite close to them and it feels like the people around him really do have his best interests at heart, you know, his days, which of course wasn't always the way. So, I mean, that's good. Yeah, I also lost his wife recently, which, you know, I'll say my grandfather, after my grandmother went, then his dementia just really spiked. There's something about that. Those two things are very much connected. Oh, yeah. I think a shock is like a lot of old people will have a fall that seems quite an insignificant fall. But after that, or after the, if you've been working long after, you know, but suppose your title day and then they suddenly stop, all these things, all these things can trigger. I mean, I met Brian and Melinda to give her in 1996 and they were both really delightful. That was before he started, you know, doing gigs again and stuff. I don't know. At that point, was he still in the throes of all of the Eugene Landy stuff? It must have been a little bit after that. No, it was after that because that was a, yeah, I guess Melinda was part of the thing that ended up rescuing him. From the kind of clutches of Landy. So, yeah, he was in a much better place than David Leif, although never, never been his official manager. You know, he's written about Brian Alone, he's a good friend. David kind of set up the opportunity for us to go down in London to meet him and film a little interview with him. And as I say, it was around about the time that he was still doing some work with Dawn Wars, but he was removed from, or Landy was removed from Brian's life, which was a great thing. Anyway, sorry for that. A week or two ago, I had Dawn was on the show and he is. I think he's one of those people, people know was not was, but he's one of those people who doesn't get credit for being. This through line between so much, you know, late 20th century, early 21st century music. Yeah, there's a whole bunch of you guys like that who. They're not really stars as such, but they do so many things. And as you see, they're involved in so many projects. They tend to almost be invisible figures. One of the things I appreciate about him specifically is kind of the the breadth of the music that he plays. You know, he's he's he's he has he is. And for a long time has been the president of Blue Note Records in New York. And he's also he's also in a band with Bob Weir, which. And he did some records of Brian wasn't. So I mean, just from Dylan, how did you find Brian to be at that point? It was a really good form. I mean, I think I mean, I spoke to him a couple of times after and met him a couple of times. But he was with Melinda and we filmed the two of them together. And there was a real warmth between the two of them. I would say Brian was I mean, he was always going to be Brian. You know, it was never going to be like having a chat with someone who wasn't damaged in some sort of way. But it was really, really friendly. And, you know, we were talking about little details about specific tracks and he would just remember them all. You know, it wasn't any sort of, you know, he didn't he didn't know what we were talking about or he couldn't remember sessions and things. And if and we asked him about he knew about and I'm a massive fan of the Beach Boys Love You, which is my favorite Beach Boys album. But it's, you know, it's one that definitely splits the vote. And without us prompting him at all, he said that that was his favorite Beach Boys album, which, of course, I was deleted by my friend David Scott, who I was doing the interview with his favorite as well. I mean, a lot of people like Alex Chilton, who, you know, we worked with him, we did our Brian Wilson tribute album. Alex straight away was, well, I'm doing someone off love you because I know how to play every track album because it's my favorite. And Carol Wilson taught Alex Chilton to play guitar. The box tops toured with them, the Beach Boys as a sport act and Carol taught them how to play guitar. Because he was like 15 in the box stops, right? Yeah, I mean, by this point, I think he would have been a little bit older because I think this was 69 because after the tour, Alex went back to Dennis's, ranch. And could you guess who were staying at Dennis's ranch at that point? Yeah, the way your face lit up. I have an idea who it might be. Yeah. So I'm not a reputable figure. Yeah, no. And yeah, so Alex is kind of interested in that whole tour that taught him guitar. And you'll say they don't meet Charles Manson. So Alex Chilton met Charles Manson at Dennis Wilson's ranch. Yeah. And he got sent for a shopping one day and I told the story that he got sent for the shopping. And it was quite a walk to the store. He didn't drive. Maybe there's later. I'm not sure. But he didn't drive that time. So he had a long walk and he got given a list. And when you arrive back at the house, one of the Manson family stopped in the middle and said, we want to check you got everything. And he'd forgotten to milk. And they said to him, oh, you forgot to milk, you need to go back and get it. And Alex, you know, he was a sort of fiery guy in a lot of ways. And a lot of people I think if he'd said to him, he would get lost. You know, I'm not walking another eight miles to get my milk. But it was like, I thought it was a good idea. I don't know why. I just thought it was a good idea. So I walked back and I got the milk. I had my inkling and now it's confirmed. But you are a font of music trivia. And I say this because one of the things that I find useful before speaking with somebody is to go through and look through the recent social media activity, you know, just to see what they've been thinking about doing lately. And I had no idea. This is just every once in a while you'll you'll you'll find something out about something and it will just completely recontextualize it. I didn't know that playing generation and in a pretty profound way was almost a cover. Yeah, I mean, musically, it's very, very similar. And it made me like blank generation bare when I figured that out. Because I thought, well, that's so clever. That's such a great idea, taking this thing, this other piece about the beach generation and turning it into the blank generation. And as I say, I think I'm a big fan of Run With You and who wrote the beach generation. And I think for some people again, it's a bit like the beach boys. Love you. He's a bit of a kind of a figure, but some people would just laugh at and dismiss. Polarizing, perhaps? Yeah, polarizing. But I think it did a lot of really great things and, you know, one of the other things I was mentioning was, well, he was the first person commissioned to write a whole album for Frank Sinatra. And I loved his response to writing that album about maybe 40% of the albums spoken word. So you think you've been the first songwriter to write an album for many people regard the greatest singer of that era. And you presented an album that's partly spoken, you know, about 40% spoken word, that's quite far out. And he made a, he made a 1977, I think it was, he made a gay disco album, which has got a pretty out there sleeve. He's, you know, it was a radical in the Maverick. It's a male porn actor with a fist full of animal vegetable shortening. Yeah. You know, the implications, I assume, are pretty clear for people. Yeah, and then, yeah, I'm not going to repeat the title because the imagery it would create alongside the kind of the product is quite blown. But so I think that's very often the way that people, to me, who are really interesting artists, are the sort of people that people could laugh at. And I think that's, you know, I think that's happened all through, you know, I guess the history of art and music. I remember Norman Blake of more famously, of teenage Vankla, who also has been, yeah, and he's been part of beam expand its family for a long, long time. And he's like, one mile, just friends. He was once interviewed and said, what do you need to be in the beam expanded? And he says, you need to be not frightened of ridicule. And I think he's, he's right, you know, what does that mean to you? I think it means, well, I don't think we've ever played safe. And I think, yeah, I'm maybe a bit of a polarizing figure for some people. Sometimes I think it's with people who don't actually even know beam expand its music. We just sort of have an idea about me or they may be seeing me a bit and they think, oh, yeah, he's just a kind of funny guy, you know, kind of quirky guy. We won't even bother listening to the work because we've kind of, we've got, we know what he's all about. And yeah, I was always the sort of guy, you know, in her hometown. We kind of came from a pretty rough ex-industrial kind of background, the towns we grew up, hard drinking sort of town. And, you know, people would generally, through my teens and past that show, a lot of people would be showing abuse at me and laughing at me. But I never actually, the arrogance of youth, I actually can, I found out I'm putting, I quite liked, you know, so it was like, if I caused outrage when I walked by a sentence pub and, you know, a bar, I don't know if the term pub is in common usage, I guess it's not. Yeah, so if you walk by, if you walk by a bar or a pub and they'll sell and people are shouting an abuse at you because of the way you look, or you don't kind of that. And most people, maybe the next day would go a different route or something, but the arrogance of youth would make me make sure I was wearing something much more outrageous for the next day. So if you were annoyed in day one, you'd have ix'd their goal by maybe wearing a deer stalker and smoking a Sherlock Holmes pipe, you know, or something just to. So, I think there's an aspect of that in the makeup and the DNA of BMX bandits. We don't deliberately go out of our way to annoy people, but if people are annoyed at us, we're not going to calm it down for you. It's really interesting to hear you say all this, because, you know, from my point of view and for as long as I even know about the band, I would never have thought to call you polarizing. Well, in the early shores we used to do. And I think this was the same for people like Orange, just some things. I think it was just the sort of time we came out. We don't get this now, but you know, people would throw glasses, you know, as in like, be really abusive. And quite a few times, if we played in our Latino, which is like an oil setting in the north of Scotland, quite often we'd have to get the police to come and they'd score as out without them, because the audience would be so out-range with it. You know, a percentage of the audience with lovers, it's a vastly inside that thing as well. A percentage of the audience would love us, but a big percentage of the audience wanted to kill us. And it's not really, it's not so much like that. I think it was just, we didn't present the image of the macho head in a stick. Can a poisonous, can a masculinity, can a rock star thing, and around about that time in the 1980s, some people found that, still found that kind of problem, you know? I have the perception that a lot of sort of the early, like, punk bands, for instance, probably ran afoul of a lot of people. So it's, again, it's a little surprising to hear that, you know, coming after that kind of counter-cultural movement that people were still that closed off. A lot of those people shouting abuse and things were actually, I run with people who weren't just, it was kind of old, older kind of rock fans, but it was definitely people who'd been kind of in the punk rock wars in some sort of way. But I guess being an expanded sand orange just weren't presenting a kind of aggressive male thing of that. Some punk bands, what he's expressed as sort of dead. I was just talking to somebody about this the other day because John Leiden is also a button pusher, but in a very different way than you are. Yeah, and he got, you know, he would get a kicking occasionally because of that. And I mean, I genuinely didn't, I managed to avoid getting the open-most locations, but it was a couple of times where, you know, someone hit me over the head with a male bar because... His idea of pushing buttons is, you know, bracing like fascism, which is a different approach. I suspect that for you, maybe a lot of it came down to, I don't know, were you, were you called, were there like gay slurs tossed about? Was it that kind of thing? Yeah, I mean, that was definitely part of it. I mean, there's a track on the new BMX bandits album, which I actually address all this, it's called "My Name is Douglas." And brackets don't listen to what they say. And the track is sort of like a dramatization of a little scene to take an electronic musical theme where various Calvin Johnson from "Be Happening" and "Jivet from Swell Maps" are playing, kind of these sayers, kind of saying, "Who is that weirdo? Calvin Johnson of all people?" I don't know. Well, I say, I wanted, I wanted the people on it doing those parts to actually be people like myself in a way, you know, who were exactly like him regular guys or regular guys. We are regular guys in some ways. Not a bully though. Yeah, not bullies and kind of anti-bullies, you know, because I've seen Calvin facing off, kind of bullies in an audience. And I've seen Joe doing it as well. And then, you know, there's also, who is that Sissy? His name is Douglas and he's not quite right. And then there's a kind of chatting about, you know, Douglas Douglas, he's not quite right. And then I come in and I do them a little bit about, you know, not being maybe quite right, not being completely normal, but being happy with being that way and kind of, I guess, the songs, kind of he says, you know, if you're like me, don't listen to those voices, those naysayers. And sometimes people don't have an arrogance of your thing that I was fortunate enough to have. And it really can cause a lot of damage for people, which can go right through the whole adult life. But yeah, don't listen to those people because, you know, they're for losers, you know, those kind of hairs. And I mean, when we joined Creation Records, Alan McGee, one of the reasons Alan McGee signed BMX Fundas was he decided he really hated us, but he never haired us. He'd never haired us or seen us. And Alan was big enough to cannot say me. He had serious drugs and then he had a bunch of records and then came to see us live and really, really loved us. And when I had my idea, because of the way some of the music press right about you, that you would be this band that I would totally hate, I thought you were going to be some sort of throwaway, slightly arch annoying comedy arch or something. But you've got this music that I love. So he signed us because he wanted to convert the world, you know, to the idea that we weren't like that, you know. But I can't help being the way I am in between songs. It's probably partly a nervousness thing that'll say things that people get galat and stuff like that, because I can't just stand there or I would be like, "Ahh!" So yeah, he wanted to go, "Well, listen to the records." You know, when I'm gone. Do you think he was successful in converting the world? No, he'd convert in the world, but definitely a lot of people, because up to that point, we'd pretty much, in the music papers, only had bad press. You know, we had in broad sheet newspapers and in radio shows and broadcasters, we'd had a lot of kind of positive reactions, but with things like the enemy and the sounds back then, it was always kind of bad. And then we released serious drugs on creation and it was like single of a weekend, pretty much. You know, every music paper was hailing it as, you know, a really important record. So that was probably partly because, you know, Alan had turned people's heads around and we still need to really thank them for that. I remember going to the creation office and he called everybody a working creation, and by that time it was quite a lot of people, even the people that were working in the warehouse, he called everybody in to his office to play Mercedes drugs. And he said, "You know, I really believe in this track and I really believe in this band and I want everybody to, like, give it the best that he possibly can, you know." And you can ask for more than that. It ends up not being a hit, partly because the BBC ended up banning it because they were running an anti-drugs week. The week it was going to be released. And it wasn't a pro-drugs record, but... The mere mention of the word in the title was enough. Yeah. I mean, it's a provocative title, but radio one, we had been told it was going to be record of a week in one DJ's show and it was going to be, like, on the last, and then Vienna, it's around eight drugs a week. And the news was broken to creations, pluggers. We can have a record, as a record of a week in some of these shows, let's say, get some serious drugs. Funnily enough, Ebenezer Goode by the, by the prodigy, not by prodigy. Who is it? Did Ebenezer Goode? Ezer Goode, Ezer Goode, Ebenezer Goode. Oh man, I forgot my name currently. Fishimin. That was actually saying Ezer Goode, Ezer Goode. That got through the bullet pole, Matt was getting played on for round-your-drug week. But a record which wasn't encouraging people to take drugs that got banned. There's such a big portion, there's such a large element to all of this that it really comes down to luck that I think a lot of people don't really discuss, you know, that it really, that it's not only just being, obviously, you have to be good at what you do, and timing is also important, but there's also just these, all these external forces that you can't, you can't account for when you're going out there. Yeah, and honestly, I mean, I sometimes think maybe I'm the lucky one. Maybe the fact it wasn't a hit. Maybe that's actually a bare thing, maybe my life would be completely messed up, maybe I would be, well, you know, I am messed up in some ways, but maybe I'd be messed up in much more serious ways, you know, because success, you know, for some people, success is the thing that leads to the, very eventually, you know, checking out of the planet, like way earlier than you would think, or stuff like that. Success isn't always a blessing or that kind of success, you know. So sometimes, you know, one thing is, I'm allowed to make the records that I want to make, and I don't have to do things like, well, you know, if this one doesn't sell quite as much, we may have to sack the caterers and we may need to sack like a couple of our merchandise crew, because we don't have, we don't have those people, you know. So if our records don't sell as much as expected, which isn't that much necessarily, it's only us. But there are pragmatic and practical concerns, though, I mean, just in terms of actually making a living, doing this for as long as you have. Of course, I mean, that is a struggle. I had a day job at one point when my first son was born a work. I still was making some music about a work through a BBC and radio and television for 10 years. What year was that about? That was from about, well, he was born 94, but by about, you know, 986, I was kind of working at the BBC, kind of so kind for about 10 years, and making like TV shows and radio shows and stuff. And there came a point where I was like, I need to be making more music again, and so I kind of turned my back at that point on having that sort of, you know, making sure I could pay my rent and all these sort of things, because yeah, it's sort of like having a disease. The thing I can do is make records and that's sort of what I feel I'm going to do, and I'm not necessarily a money-making machine, you know. I think I definitely know people who feel the pressures of, well, if we do something a bit different or if we really go out there, you know, that's a lot of pressure, you know, we're letting a lot of people down and also have now got this lifestyle that is going to be maybe hard to walk away from, you know. I'm currently in a lot of kind of cupboard underneath the stairs because we don't know how to square room and things like that, but I'm not unhappy about that. It's fine, you know. It's a great little studio, honestly. Yeah, and I can, you know, my jackets are really close by and, you know, the other day I was in doing an interview and I found, I can't see it right now, but I found my Kermit the Frog tracksuit, but I thought I'd miss play. I'm sorry, Kermit the Frog tracks it? Well, it's actually only the top half. Yeah, it's an either Kermit the Frog. It's not easy being green tracks out top. It doesn't actually look like Kermit the Frog. Well, it's got a big embroider pyramid of frog on the back of it and it says it's not easy being green. Yeah, I need to see this if you've got that handy. We're not going to be using the video in this interview, but I... Yeah, this is a good bit for the listeners. This is what Radio's made to do. Oh, yeah, I find it. He's in a very small space. Oh, wow. Okay, so let's describe this. Okay, so it's... Oh, yeah, there you go. So it's very, it's extremely green and it's got a Kermit on the back. And that's Adidas. Oh, yeah. And he has embroider. It's not just like a bad print. It's like he's embroidered there and the aligning. How did you come into this? Actually, you know, someone bought it as a present, so I don't know where he got it. But I used to have Kermit the Frog Adidas trainers. And yeah, Kermit... Kermit is like, you know, Jim Henson's is a big a guy in my life as pretty much any, you know, pop star or ox star. In fact, more than most pop stars, you know, ox stars. And I think beam expanding, you know, the whole thing, Kermit has this kind of ethos almost like the officer, a extended family who would get together and have crazy adventures and two unchosen things. And it's sort of like beam expanding. You know, because Norman and Sean Dixon, you know, left beam expanded officially years and years ago. But we're still going to pop up, you know? That's great. Do you think that that to an extent the fact that you haven't been, I guess confined in a van touring with those two guys for decades has strengthened your relationship? I mean, possibly, I do wish, you know, like, sometimes with Sean and I, stay geographically closer together. You know, in terms of America, you know, that might seem ridiculous because, you know, Britain's operating small stage country. But yeah, he lives, you know, in the very south of London and I live in Scotland. So listen, I live in, I live in Queens and it is so difficult for me to get to Brooklyn to see people. So I completely, I can, I can empathize with that. Yeah, you know, and, but it possibly is. And it's also just kind of lovely that they actually, they want to spend some of their time occasionally doing stuff, you know, related to the beam expanded universe, all these years later, because it's almost 40 years since Sean and I formed beam expanded because it was the two of us who started the band back then. Obviously there are all, obviously, you know, certainly Teenage Fan Club has done well for themselves in terms of, you know, sticking around and staying together. But there are so many cases of, I always, I always say, if you want to test a relationship, the strength of relationship, you move in with somebody. It's a really good way to kind of get to the bottom of if you're compatible with somebody. And I think that that being in a band with somebody for an extended period of time and sharing tight spaces is a really good way to test the strength of that relationship. Well, totally. I mean, we've always been very fortunate that we possibly because and other thing is, you know, unlike some of my more successful and common use of the sense friends, we haven't been like in tour vans for months and months and ends and stuff. I've got a couple of friends who are very successful looking at national DJs based in Scotland called Optimo. And every time they fly, they never sit together. And it's because it's not because they don't like each other. It's actually because we don't want the thing to get worn down. So they always do think of, you know, make sure that they give each other their own space and their relationships are really good and healthy one. The equivalent of my role does, I know a lot of people who host podcasts with someone else and they just won't, they won't really talk in the meantime so that the conversations are fresh when they get back together. And I guess a lot of people have an idea that all bands are like the monkeys or something, you know. The monkeys are definitely not like the monkeys. No. I share my birthday with two of the monkeys. That could be something for the yourself and the listeners to guess which two monkeys that I share my birthday with. There's a coin one of the album titles. This is a good trivia. I'm gonna have to dig into this. I mean, I think the easiest way to figure this out is to determine which two monkeys have the same birthday and then go from there. Yeah. Two monkeys that have the same birthday are possibly the two that didn't like each other most, which is interesting. I assume one of them is Mike because I feel like as much as I look like he might not have been an easy guy to get along with. Mike's one of them, yeah. Was it Mike and Mickey? No. Mike and Mickey did get on quite well. Oh, they did get on. Okay. Then would you say that it's the member of the band that was most similar to Mike in terms of musical background? No. Okay. So, okay. So, it's Davey. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I share a birthday with both Mike and Davey. I remember after like, funnily enough, Peter Tork, who I guess you were thinking of is the one who did most similar musical background. I remember after he died, I'm not getting him because he was dead, but I saw an interview with Mike and he was talking about how devastated he was about it. And I was like, oh, that's kind of nice. He's good. I mean, I never talked to him. And the first time we were touring together and he was going, I mean, I don't think we had, you know, like, we spoke more in the sentence and over like the last, you know, 10 years, but you know, I really loved the guy. You're like, what? Part of me understands that. Part of me understands that, you know, they, the level of fame that they went through. And I assume that their breakup was not particularly easy. And then also just, you know, unfortunately, this is a thing. I certainly, you're somebody who, you know, by nature of, I think where you're from and the fact that these people that you knew early on ended up doing something very similar to you have been in touch with people. But, you know, life, life happens and gets in the way and you'll, you'll suddenly look down and realize you've not talked to somebody in several years. Yeah. I think it was just, I was surprised because people are actively doing get all fat again. That's fair. But having said that, when I started working in broadcast and the first interview I got sent to do was with Ray Davis. And, you know, I was really nervous. You know, I got set up for radio and I got sent with my little, you know, BBC tape machine. I assume he's got to be a vicarra of yours. Yeah, very much so. And I spoke to a couple of other people in the building, you know, I'm going to be interviewing Ray Davis. And I have to say, he could not have been lovely. For me, it was like, he was so lovely, soaking so good, really giving any interview. And, I mean, he, you know, and I thought, I was advising not to mention anything about his brother. And, you know, how many his brother now, I think, you know, I think we've managed to sort all of that stuff out. Sort of. Yeah. But he got real bitter between the two of them. Yeah, but but able to be around each other now, in terms of that. And, you know, he said, you know, I love him. I love him so much. You know, I was on stage and, you know, someone threw something and whatever, you know, I jumped his defense like that, you know, I love him, but I can't talk. I can't, I can't be in the same room as him unless we're on stage. So that is the thing. And it probably is the love that makes it so, it hurts you so much, or you feel that extreme emotion. You know, if you didn't hear that much about a person, and they were doing some things that, you'd just go, ah, we'll have it. But when it's, when it's blood, I guess it hurts more. You know, it's interesting that you say that people are telling you who's a difficult interview. I, I, I have not, unfortunately, had a chance to interview him. I'm going to say yet because obviously he's on a very short list for me. But I found in a lot of cases that people that I felt going into it were going to be difficult interview, whether because of reputation or because I've listened to interviews that they've done. This is going to sound very obvious on the face of it. But if you just ask different questions, and if you ask interesting questions, and if you make it conversational, then you can win a lot of people over pretty, I mean, sometimes they're, it's somebody's just having a bad day, and that's not your fault. But for the most part, you can win people over just by holding them. Yeah, because I think so many people, when you've gotten your, if we're big, big names, and you've gotten your album out or doing on your tour, forgetting interviewed by a whole bunch of people who know nothing, and you've just read a Wikipedia article or, you know, a lot of kind of brief fresh ones for that thing, and you don't know, and you don't care about what the person's done. So when you meet, you know, someone like you, and then over your context, and you actually know, and you know, you can even just see that you're engaged, and you're, you care about things that they've done, but like, wow. Your guard is up for the first few minutes of the conversation, although I will say, and this has only happened to me a few times, but I've actually had a couple of, obviously I won't mention these people by name, but I've had a few instances where the conversation got so deep and so personal, and they weren't anticipating it, that they asked me to actually pull the interview because they talked about things they didn't want to talk about. Yeah, I also didn't get that. Yeah, you can think of things tumbled out because you're almost, you've probably caught out because they're not used to someone actually having that label of, you've been able to, can I empathize, I can a label of empathy, that can make some more comfortable than you they possibly want to be. I mean, you must have had a secret weapon in that sample being a touring musician yourself. Yeah, I mean, one of the ones I really remember was I interviewed James Taylor, and it was, it was down the line, you know, so it was, you know, we didn't have pictures, it was like this, but it was just audio, and it was really, really cold at the start of the interview. And I mean, it started getting off, he wasn't in polite, but he was getting pretty brief, you know, answers. And I'm a big fan of a ranger called Nick DiCaro, you know, he worked in a lot of the classic E&M records, and he was in his own right and stuff, and I knew he'd worked with James Taylor. And because I'm such a big fan of his guy Nick DiCaro, I knew that he was incredibly well loved by people he worked with, and so I thought I'm just going to go out and go out, but also sort of interested. And it wasn't when he necessarily beat a sort of thing that the listeners of show were wanting to hear about, because he'd say people listening, and I'm nicely going in and care about who James Taylor thinks of that DiCaro, because I haven't heard of him, don't necessarily know who he is. And I said, you know, I hope you don't mean asking you, someone I'm a massive fan of, is the late Nick DiCaro, and, you know, I know you worked with Nick, and I was just wondering, you know, if you didn't get any reflections on it, and that was the point. Everything changed, because he was just like, I love that man so much, he's going to, I'm just so happy, you know, guys, like you didn't know what you existed, and you know, and he was such an incredible, beautiful human being, such an brilliant musician, and he was, you know, the Taylor story's like when Nick was leading the orchestra, rather than just conducting, he would be playing his accordion. In time? And, you know, so the conducting of the orchestra, and the accordion wouldn't be meant to operate, it was just a kind of thing, you know, he would be playing it for his own pleasure, and enjoying it, and he was going to the other thing, which I loved, because he, guy, you know, he'd worked with, you know, a lot of him isn't that, and a lot of big names, no people like, I think he worked with people like Streisins and Dolly Parton, and people like that as well, and he wouldn't do sessions, I think it was an either Tuesday afternoons or Wednesday afternoons, and no matter how big the name was, it was like, well, I can't do that, because he played his accordion at the local folks home every Tuesday afternoon, and that was like, well, yeah, I'm not cancelling that. Incredibly humanizing thing for someone. So I think you're right, if you can find that thing, you know, it's just a thing that people haven't asked him about, and I think it means a lot to him, and that was also good, because it was not in any way about his ego or his achievements, and I think he probably loved that, he was just getting to talk about someone they loved who was no longer around, and thinking, well, that's good, people don't talk about this guy. Are you familiar with Nardwar? Oh yeah, because to me, he is the best at that, at just catching people completely off guard, and I think that's why he's so loved. I sort of think if he'd happened, you know, if he'd kind of started out 20 years later, I think he'd been a massive, massive social media, media, possibly that wouldn't have been for the bear, but it's just almost like he was made for the wrong time, but in a way, maybe it was better, he did appear when that stuff wasn't quite as crazy. My personal estimation of somebody drops significantly if they're mean to Nardwar. Oh yeah. For example, and this was, you know, they were like kids at the time and whatever, but like blur was kind of mean to him, and I'm like, I love blur as a band, but being mean to Nardwar, you drop a couple of notches from me. Yeah, there's lots of stories about being in Kenarsie, and I'm not going to, but they're older now, if they are getting some years, can be a funny, you know, it can affect people in different ways. I'm not saying they're bad guys, or I don't... They were young and they were huge too, and those two things don't always go together well. And you get some people who have their arms, then you just remain lovely. I mean, I remember again, one of the... I was running the interview tent for a kind of big festival used to haunt me, a cool team in the park. It was like the big festival in Scotland, and I was running that interview tent for a BBC, and I had to go and pick up Gwen Stefani to do an interview. And, you know, she was really just immediately chatting, and I was a kid who was hanging about backstage, who, you know, had some sort of clear kind of learning difficulties and stuff going on. And then he'd, like, a karate badge, you know, on his jacket. And, you know, people are commassing at me saying things, and she's saying the things you're going to... And then, but when he came up, you know, it was, like, so much loving attention. You know, really good hearted. She was like doing karate moves with him and all this sort of stuff, and courage. You know, and you could tell, like, when we ended up being something like 10 or 15 minutes late to get to the interview tent, because she was giving them so much. And, you know, I wasn't the guy who was going to be saying, I was just kind of like, it's worth it, because, you know, they can amount of joy that she was she was bringing them by, you know, just engaging, and that being really, really warm, you know. It's similar to the accordion story, which is in, you know, as somebody who has been through the ringer and the music business, I think, when you meet genuine people, it's just, it's a nice change from music industry people. Yeah, I mean, I've been fortunate, most of the people, even people, I've admired when I met them, I've been pretty nice. And I have met some kind of awful people. I assume Gwen Stefani has met a lot of awful people, given, like, how big is that? Totally, totally. You know, I met, we, you know, BMX bandits, this is not the sort of story, but I would be telling you not to put out, this is not a sort of story I normally tell when I'm being interviewed. But BMX bandits, first of a tour of Oasis that was with BMX bandits, supporting, opening for BMX bandits. And talk about people who have well, talk about brothers who don't get along and people who might be necessarily the coolest other people. I met, I bumped into both of the brothers for the first time in some, like, 10 years after that within a week of each other. One of them was up with his girlfriend about time, and she was taking part in a TV show, I was working behind the scenes on. And that was Liam. And man, Liam could not be nicer. He was so warm, so friendly to me. He was also really nice to all the kids in the audience, you know, because kids were shooting, kind of cheeky things at him and kind of funny things. And he was just being so charming, and, you know, he was saying, "The other people weren't in the show." Yeah, me and the big man, we go way back and all the sort of stuff. And I know, I know people, I know Liam would live, and he's got a sort of persona in the media, but, you know, he'd be the guy he would be out, like, he'd give the ice cream van, like a whole bunch of cash and say it's a nice day, give the kids free ice cream for the next few hours and stuff like that, you know. And I know people have worked for him and croon all that, and they just, you know, he's such a kind of sweet heart and heart. And then I met Liam, not Liam, sorry, I met no team in the park when I was doing the interview tent. I think it was the same year as Gwen Stefani. And I can't wait. And I was like, "What number is it?" I was going, "I don't know if you remember me." And he's like, "Yeah, I remember you. I remember you thrown me out your effing dressing room for smoking." And then he wouldn't talk to me for the rest of the time. Is that a true story? Did you throw him out for smoking? The story is, that time people could still smoke indoors in Britain, which we can't do anymore. And I've never been a smoker. It was a quite long tour for us, so I was getting really pretty throaty. And I was really worried about, you know, my throat going, and everybody was just socialising in their dressing because it was a bigger, a bigger room. And I was finding that we couldn't have thrown the throat. And I saw a sort of saying, "What's in guys?" My throat's, you know, a bit of a concern. Would it be okay if, like, people wouldn't smoke if it might be going to cover dressing room or something like that? Everybody was like, "Yeah, sounds. No problem. No problem. You know, like, Liam, bonehead. All those guys were all like, "Yeah, it's fine." And I could see that though, looked annoyed. You know, they could have shuffled out. And then I thought, "I mean, I sort of took some sort of delight at the fact that he's this multi-pouching here, incredibly successful artist. The guy who he left, you know, in the kind of gutter almost, you know, all those years ago, he's still, oh, I'm not saying he has losing sleep." He's holding on to it. He's still holding on to it, like, something that I would, to be honest, wasn't like me being, I think, unreasonable or divish or, and no one else in that group took personally at all. I tell a certain sense of victory that, you know, and it was on a promo screen documentary a couple years after for the BBC, and he managed. He didn't, and he brought a BMX band. It's up just to belittle us. And I was just like, "Boy, I really got some, didn't I?" That's amazing. Another thing I'm not sure was Francis Mcdonald, who was in BMX band, which was the other main writer of that time, took him aside one night and said, "This is very fragile," he took him aside and went, "Listen, some of your songs are okay." it's good but i mean you need some more interesting chords than you okay let's look at the song left forever and he's gonna go and what you started with blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah you know it was a chord that you never heard of and no say to Francis oh if i use any of your your ideas that need to give you a right and credit and tries to slide i don't want to read i don't want to write and credit your songs the way blah blah these songs aren't going anywhere you know i did the final arm went off so we were quite literally saved with a bail but i always really amused me as well but the fact that if you made Francis after all these years he probably would be maybe not so friendly as we're talking about this i'm thinking about how just like such an important part of getting older and maturing is being able to let go of those things i totally i'm not really i'm not a person that holds grudges and i think it's a really i think i've been so blessed in being that because i know of our people who i think are really good people but they sometimes are not kind of pretty difficult and it really poisons you you know you're the person ends up losing out it's not the person you have the grudge against you know they're probably a way not thinking in about you so you know i wasn't thinking you know i hadn't been spending what's a nice line of ed thinking about you know oasis become the much more successful band regarding record sales when the game expands it's i was never thinking about it and if it ended the average that i can go please for you know you know and i am i am pleased you know i'm pleased for Liam i think he's a i think he's a nice guy um but it's just like it's like the idea that you were told only something but even though you've had all of this amazing success you know it's kind of it's sad i think about that with trump of just like you know you got to be the president and you can tell that there are just things somebody slighted him 20 years ago he's still holding on to i know it's it's a funny one you know um but yeah in my in my world we've been successful because we've been allowed to do what we sort of want to do and if we've actually sold a whole bunch of more records and made a lot of other people money maybe we wouldn't have i'm sure it would have been great and exciting things that would have found but um you know for me the most important thing is we've sort of been allowed to do what we want to do and in your records very like that you know [BLANK_AUDIO]