Bressie comes out fighting
He fantasises about killing Bertie and Biffo, armed himself with a baseball bat during the London riots and has some choice words for people who think he walked out on The Blizzards. He’s also made a solo album, Colourblind Stereo, which he hopes people will care about enough not to illegally download. Niall Breslin pulls no punches talking to Stuart Clark.
Stuart Clark, 29 Sep 2011
“Well, it wasn’t really him,” Niall explains. “The guy who signed me to Universal Publishing when I was with The Blizzards got offered the job of Head of Music at 19 literally two weeks later. He said he believed in me as a pop writer. Simon Fuller is very hands-off, he doesn’t really get involved with the day-to-day music stuff.”
So he’s not some megalomaniac Rupert Murdoch-type who wants the final say on what sort of toilet paper goes into the studio khazi?
“No, he gives people briefs and budgets and lets them get on with it. There’s this idea that Simon Fuller’s the devil, but 19 have been responsible for some fucking amazing pop music. Respect where respect is due.”
Whilst an unashamed pop record – Duran Duran, Pet Shop Boys, Mika and the mighty Hall & Oates are among the trace elements I’ve detected – Colourblind Stereo contains some “Fight the power!” lyrical barbs that Chuck D and the boys would be proud of.
“I’ve never felt an anger like I felt before I left for London,” Bressie reveals. “Not only did I leave The Blizzards, I couldn’t stomach living here anymore. That’s how bad I was. I had visions of seeing Brian Cowen or Bertie Ahern in the street and
killing them.”
Sentiments which I suspect are shared by a goodly part of the Irish population. What in particular was it that made Bressie want to go ex-Taoiseach-hunting with an AK-47?
“My dad worked his fucking ass off his entire life in the army, only for them to cut his pension by 15%. How can they do that? They’re robbing him. He was always away – he had to go to Israel and Sarajevo constantly so he could climb up the ranks and get a better pension. Then this happened and I was like, ‘How fucking dare they.’ My sister said they were treating us like animals, so I wrote a song called that which made it on to the album.”
A political polemic dressed up as a thumping Europop floorfiller, its ‘Treat us like animals/That’s how we’ll react’ refrain has more than a whiff of the civic unrests about it.
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