On only worrying about the things that matter

It’s quite late in the UK right now, and I’m told you’re a confirmed night owl. Is that the result of decades of touring, or have you always been that way?

To the deep regret of my family and everybody I’ve ever known, yes—I’m a night owl. I was always that way. It’s compounded by the touring lifestyle, perhaps, or maybe a better way of putting it would be, indulged by the touring lifestyle. This is a very clear creative issue I have: I am more creative late at night.

When my wife was working away in London and we didn’t have a child, I got so much work done in those three and a half years, it was ridiculous. Whereas in the last few years, living in a house with a child, a child who loves music—just not at half-two in the morning—I really struggle with that.

I love late nights. I don’t run anymore, but I used to run a hundred miles a week. And I’d run at two or three in the morning, and if you’d point me to a snowstorm at two o’clock in the morning in the middle of winter, that was my perfect time. It was as close as I’ve ever really got to being able to meditate. The solitude. And running in quite dangerous places. And I don’t mean gang-type dangerous places, I mean really barren places where you can imagine some kind of Hammer Horror thing occurring. I’m not a thrill seeker in any way—I actively obey the rules—but I love the night. The possibilities, the stillness, the quiet.

I can’t imagine you get much sleep if you have a child and you stay up all night.

The thing about working at night is that it just doesn’t rub up against real life very well. One of my challenges over the last few years has been confronting the kind of person I am. I don’t mean that in a horrible way: I’m not a murderer or anything, but certainly in terms of the way I approach time. I’m trying to adjust to being able to work during the day when my daughter is at school. But that isn’t necessarily how I work best. If I look outside and it’s a nice day, I don’t go, “Right, time for rock music.” I’m very conditioned by my environment, to the point where I’ve never written a good song wearing shorts.

What’s your ideal writing environment?

My room has to be tidy. My guitars have to be arranged in a particular way behind me. Okay, a lot of these could be seen as the symptoms of ADHD, but they are also symptoms of a process. A process and very much an environmental determinism. Damien [Sayell], our bass player, is well into his environmental determinism, but it’s incredible to me. If I’m putting on pajamas, that’s because I’m about to go to sleep. I’m talking to you at the minute and without even realizing it, I’ve dressed for an interview—and by that I don’t mean in a cravat, but I’m dressed as if I was going onstage to perform. I’m there in that moment. But, as you’ve also seen, part of my creative process is to digress a little from time to time.

That’s where some of the best material comes from.

Yes, it is, but it is also where we can find the bottomless wells of wasted time. Please be careful to just step on the end of my toe if I go too far.

You play in Mclusky, Future of the Left, and Christian Fitness. Is there a specific philosophy or attitude that you bring to all three?

No, there’s not—or rather, there’s not a conscious philosophy. There’s just a question of, without ever having to articulate it, without ever having to stand on a mountain and dramatically yell, “This is true to me!”—that’s what it is. I suppose it speaks of me, whatever the hell it is that I am, in the same way that some of it’s a little bit ridiculous, some of it’s funny, but it just also has to appear natural. It’s a very difficult thing to analyze from inside, how your own personality comes across in music, because, frankly, if you’re prepared to sit back and analyze what other people thought of it, that would just be horrifying in the same way that if people are talking about me behind my back, I just don’t want to know.

Everybody who’s made records indulges in this occasionally—you’ll [search] your own name or whatever. I think I’ve done it on Twitter and Google about four times ever, and I looked once at some comments on YouTube very recently, and it was just horrific. And it’s horrific even sometimes when it’s good, because a person can like it more incorrectly than a person can dislike it sometimes. They can get the wrong end of the stick.

I’ve talked to musicians who avoid reading comments religiously, and one of the reasons that’s been offered by a few of them is that if you accept the positive stuff, the complimentary ones, you have to accept the negative ones as well. Therefore, it’s better to avoid all of them.

The way I look at it is, people who hear your music in any form have a window into your existence. Somebody who’s being negative probably hasn’t spent that much time with it, unless they’re a masochist. But also, I can’t be critical of people being critical about stuff. It’s very important. From a personal standpoint—and this is something I’m very aware of with myself, and it hasn’t necessarily been a good part of my personality at times—is that sometimes it’s very easy to define what you’re against, but you also have to turn around and say what you’re for as well. The cynicism needs to be built on a bed of hope. If it’s just nihilism—a word I’ve always struggled to pronounce, as you’ve just borne witness to—then I’m probably not interested. Unless it’s really funny. You’ve got to be really funny to get away with that stuff.

Which segues nicely into this: your lyrics have always had a very distinct sense of humor. I can tell just by speaking with you and reading old interviews of yours that you’re a naturally funny guy. Why is it important to show that side of yourself in your lyrics?

Again, there’s not a moment where you have to articulate to people, “This is important to do this.” It just is important to do it. On one level, if you’re being cynical about this, or clinical, because sometimes those two words intersect not only in sound, but in scenario, it’s also the thing that stops it having wider appeal. But it’s also the thing which gives it appeal in the first place—or gives it its edge in a way that is going to be successful with a certain crowd that appreciates rawness in music. But then, as the band becomes bigger, you can almost trace the inverse relationship with the rawness of the music, up to the stadium level. It’s so scientific, it’s almost physics.

Some serious-minded folks—I call them uptight—are adamant that humor doesn’t belong in music. How do you feel about that?

I think when somebody says that it’s like when some people talk about free speech. I think they mean that other people’s sense of humor doesn’t belong in music. When I’ve been to a show or listen to a record, I like to feel like I’ve been in the presence of the people who made it. When you’re a teenager and you get into music, you’re looking for a tribe as much as a fucking pretty song that you like. You’re looking for the people you’re going to spend time with, be inspired with, sleep with, and so on—and that’s an important part of it.

But you should recognize that you’re buying into the whole package. You’re buying into the whole package whether you’re straightedge or you’re into Rihanna. Maybe that’s not so much the case with a band like us. The majority of our audience have been swept along on a, I wouldn’t exactly say a rushing torrent of nostalgia, but maybe a bubbling brook. I’m pleased to say that’s not the entirety of the audience. There are people just now discovering us for the first time, which is a wonderful feeling.

You’re about to unveil the first Mclusky record in 20 years. What needed to happen, creatively or personally, to get back into that mode after so much time?

Like with anything, you just have to do it. I know the wide use of AI suggests differently, but there are no shortcuts with this. You want to write some good songs? Write some bad songs first. Write and write and write and remember to enjoy it. Remember not just to think of music as a vehicle to take you to different places, to meet different people in all kinds of senses of the word, but to enjoy the average moments as well.

The process and the challenge of it gets harder as you get older and you’ve written songs because you realize not only have most of the bits of music been used up, but you’ve specifically used up some of it. It’s a challenge. You can choose to see it as this obstacle, or you can choose to see it as this thing that makes it even more exciting. It’s where the pressure is almost the point. There’s a lot of nostalgia that’s brought people to our shows over the last few years. That’s fucking great. And now we’ve got the challenge of not letting them down with the new material. That’s fucking brilliant. I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about my mother, who’s in a care home in the northeast of England with dementia. That’s worry. That’s the terrible thing. Art and music are magic.

You mentioned the challenge of not letting longtime fans down with the new album. How do you view that?

If somebody who liked the band back in the day doesn’t like the new stuff, I’m so proud that that person would’ve called themselves a fan at one stage, but also boo-fucking-hoo. Everybody who isn’t a psychopath has imposter syndrome when they’re doing certain things. I have imposter syndrome socially. I’m good in a group of two or three people, but more than that, I struggle. I just struggle with all the information. It’s not good for me. But I walk on the stage now and it’s my fucking stage. But it took a long time for me to feel like that.

There seems to be a little bit of an appetite for Mclusky now, but back in the day, we were very out of place and out of time. We were genuine outsiders. I don’t mean a bunch of good-looking guys who put on leather jackets and said, “We’re outsiders,” in unrealistically gravelly voices, but actual odd people. We’re actually far less odd now and far more “Fuck you.” At the risk of sounding like the plot of How Stella Got Her Groove Back, that’s a real fucking thing.

For example, we’re doing nine shows next month around the release of the album, and one of those shows is in Brussels at Casco Le Botanique with the Jesus Lizard. And I love the Jesus Lizard. They’re one of my favorite bands. But that night, we go onstage to fucking destroy them. Whether it happens or not is another thing entirely. That’s in the eye of the beholder, but that’s what rock music is to me.

I don’t know if that sounds terrible, because honestly, I’m so far away from being some alpha male guy. I just don’t have it in me. I think I’m a little bit too ridiculous for that, but that is absolutely the vibe of the band. Maybe that doesn’t work so well with the humor aspect, or maybe that makes it seem to people as if the humor in the band is really cool. But even though a lot of the humor I was raised on, or liked when I was a teenager, maybe tended towards the cruel or certainly very cynical side, the band is meant to be fun, and the live shows are meant to be welcoming.

I did another interview recently where I was asked about anger. Undoubtedly, the songs sound angry. But I can tell you that I’m not going through any emotional catharsis that I’m aware of. The only catharsis I’m going through is with my bank account. And my non-existent pension. I’m worried about money. I’m worried about the health of my family. I’m not worried about anything which takes me onto the stage.

When people see someone who is as prolific as yourself, someone who seems to be touring and putting out records all the time, there’s a widely held misconception that you’re living some sort of rock-star lifestyle. But not the case for bands playing clubs and theaters.

No, quite the opposite. I’ve actually earned okay for the last two years, but there were lots of years where I didn’t even earn enough to pay tax. During the heyday of Mclusky, in the early 2000s, I was living on £4,000 a year. Back then, the best payday I had was the first time we went to Australia. Beggars Banquet sent us the opposite way around the world via LA to go to Australia—thanks to them for that. The plane to LA was full, so the airline staff asked if we would mind going onto the next plane, which was two hours later. Because that’s what you need when you’ve got a 40-hour journey: A two-hour delay.

We said yes, and as a result, they paid us 150 pounds in vouchers, which we could then spend in the duty-free. And that was the best payday we had in Mclusky back then.

That is both incredibly sad and totally unsurprising.

Yeah, but that’s the way. In another way, I’ve made money in the last couple of years, or rather I’ve received money in the last two years that I earned 20 years ago by doing what I did, by writing those songs, by having those experiences. I did make a small proportion of the money that maybe I should have made later, but it’s definitely not a money-making scheme. And if it is—I always say this line, so apologies in advance—if it is a money-making scheme, it’s a very badly conceived one.

Hopefully I’ll still be using that one in 15 years if I’m still knocking around. But hopefully by then I’ll be saying it ironically because I’ll have what you guys call a 401(k). You’re so cute with your names.

I don’t have one of those, so leave me out of it.

Yeah, I know the feeling. Two friends of mine who work in proper jobs were talking the other day about their pensions. They’re lovely guys, but I just had to absent myself from the room because I was bound to have a breakdown. I’m not a person who thinks about money until I’m confronted with the reality of it. But hey—there’s money and there’s health. As long as everybody’s healthy in the minute, hopefully the money will sort itself out.