Midway through his edgy debut solo single, ‘Angela’s Eyes’, Elbow frontman Guy Garvey sings the lines, “I was heading for an early grave ’til I washed up on her tide/ Yes, I believe in Angela’s eyes.”
Actually, given that the 41-year-old Mancunian – born, rather ominously, in the town of Bury – remains a dedicated devotee of fags and booze, he’s not so optimistic about the amount of time he has left on this mortal coil.
“I’m still very much headed for an early grave,” he admits, with a heavy sigh. “I have to change my habits at some point because I’ve had waaay too much fun. I’m waiting for the piano to fall on me out of the sky, at any moment. All the questions a hard drinker asks himself in his early forties: ‘Can this continue?’”
Thankfully, while still gracing us with his ultra- talented presence, Garvey is putting his time on this Earth to very good use. When not enjoying himself ‘down t’pub’, he also occasionally writes and sings heart-warming, heart-breaking and heartfelt songs.
After 25 years and six albums with Elbow, most recently 2014’s widely admired The Take Off And Landing Of Everything, Garvey has just released his debut solo album, Courting The Squall.
“The phrase ‘vanity project’ is absolutely applicable,” he chuckles. “It’s something I’ve thought about, it’s something I’ve wondered about. I saw a gap in the Elbow schedule and I thought, ‘Let’s give it a whirl’, because one or two things will happen. It will be a success, which will be great fun and hilarious, or it will be a crashing failure, which will be great fun and hilarious. So I thought I’d give it a whirl.”
Not that he whirled too far out of his comfort zone. The musical personnel he recruited for the project were mostly old mates and familiar faces.
“Five of the band I chose to play with are people I know and love,” he says. “Elbow’s brass section are wonderful people, and I know them very well. My best friend, Peter Jobson from I Am Kloot, and my other buddy, Nathan Sudders from The Whip. All on board. And Danny Evans, who co-produced and recorded the album, he’s been with Elbow forever. So, yeah, very much inside my comfort zone. The only difference being that I didn’t have the boys’ opinion to fall back on. It was just trying something for trying’s sake.”
Although some of Courting The Squall was done in Manchester’s Blueprint Studios (Elbow’s traditional base of operations), most of the album was laid down in Peter Gabriel’s renowned Real World recording facility in Wiltshire.
“I’m absolutely convinced you can do more in a residential studio in two weeks than you can visiting office hours in the studio near your home in six months,” he declares. “The place is built so you have the ideal of making a record. It’s great, you get to swim around in the lake, record without thinking about things outside of it.
“So the average day would be, plan to start at ten, actually start at twelve. Work your way until about six o’clock in the evening, have an evening meal, accompanied by some wine, and then work until two, three in the morning. Half the ideas will be rubbish, and the other half making the record. And the whole thing was just an enormous laugh.”
The gravelly Garvey has always been a very distinctive vocalist. Does he sing better early in the day, when he’s still relatively fresh, or late at night after he’s had a few?
“It’s different,” he mulls. “Actually a fragile vocal, much better early in the morning, a robust vocal, much better late at night. And you know, you try anything for a bit of difference after twenty years doing it. So I did some vocals lying down, I did some vocals jogging on the spot. Whatever it takes to make the record work.”
The album’s lead single has just been released. Who’s the Angela of ‘Angela’s Eyes’ anyway?
“It could be my true love, the woman I’m currently dating,” he hints. “It could be Angela Merkel. It could be just a fictitious angel. It’s funny, the whole song’s about feeling cheated by constructs you’ve been asked to believe in. In the case of the song, the constructs are the church, the government. You mention astrology, California self-help, the lot. Anything you’ve been asked to believe in, in modern Western culture, falling by the wayside and you decide the only thing you care about is the eyes of the woman you love. So Angela could be anybody.”
The album also features a duet with acclaimed American singer Jolie Holland.
“A dream come true,” he gushes. “I was introduced to her music by my good friend Tony Gilfellon, he’s an amazing musician and a very old friend. And he played on her record, Catalpa, and I fell instantly in love with it. And when I suddenly fell in love with it, I found out it was Tom Waits’ favourite record. She’s somebody for whom whether or not to write music isn’t a question. Her motivation comes from her soul, you know, and from her stomach.”
Had he met her beforehand?
“No, I hadn’t met her, I’d never even seen her play live. I just loved her record for years and years. And it was one of those, I sent an email to her saying, ‘Please come and sing a song with me or co-write a song with me.’ I’ve never co-written a lyric before that. I’ve done a duet before, I did ‘The Fix’ with Richard Hawley. But I wrote the words for that. I’d never co-written a song with anyone before.
“She turned up at Real World rightfully suspicious of my intentions. You know, I flew her over and I put her up and I said: ‘Please come, because I just love you.’ And she was obviously, for the first few hours, she was a little cautious and then we had the most wonderful time. And at the time we were both conducting transatlantic love affairs and that’s what the song ended up being about, which is really, really fitting.
“We talked about our respective love affairs,” he continues. “My favourite bit was, we’d written verse one and we’d written the chorus, and I said to her, ‘What have we not said that you always say during a phone conversation with somebody you love far away? What sentiment have we missed?’ And she said, ‘Well, fuck it, tell me what you’re wearing.’ And that’s the second line of the third verse, so I mean ridiculous. She’s my David Bowie, she’s my Tom Waits. She’s amazing. She’s a seasoned road warrior, and she believes in having a go. And we ended up having the loveliest weekend together, and that is something I’m really proud of.”
That duet aside, Garvey wrote the rest of the album himself. How would he describe Courting the Squall?
“It’s very much from the hip,” he explains. “You can imagine, all of Elbow are songwriters and for that reason it takes quite a while. Every single decision musically, and even lyrically even though I’m the only lyricist in Elbow, it all comes under scrutiny from the band. There’s a lot of talking, there’s a lot of debate, which I’m very proud of. I know bands that don’t communicate well at all.
“But I wanted this to be fast, from the hip. And I got to revisit lyrical themes that I’d written very thoroughly with Elbow. So, overall, it’s from the hip...and funky. And I was determined to write the day, because I was writing it in the studio, I was determined to write the moment. If I was working on something that got remotely boring, I said, ‘Stop, let’s do something else’. Which isn’t an option if you’re in a room with four other songwriters. It was, as I say, very much a vanity project. You expect to be captain of the ship.”
Is he saying he arrived into Real World with no finished songs written?
“Yeah, virtually nothing,” he laughs. “I did it like Mike Leigh does his films, I assembled a cast with no idea of what the story was. And it was a joyous thing from start to finish, and I was prepared for it to be a disaster, because I’ve never tried anything like this before. I’ve produced people’s records and been at the helm in that perspective, but that’s also honouring somebody else’s idea, his wishes. This is the first time I’ve been able to say, after working on something for hours, say: ‘I’m not feeling this anymore, let’s stop and do something else.’ So, above all, it was fun and I think that comes across on the record.”
Outside of the solo album, Garvey had dabbled with other creative projects. He was writing a novel, but that’s currently on hold. “Yeah, I got a few chapters in, it’s a good read, and I thought: ‘Hang on a minute, isn’t this something you do when you’re about to retire?’ So I put the brakes on it.”
Acting was another thwarted ambition. Although he was offered a minor role in Game of Thrones, ultimately his touring commitments meant he wasn’t able to do it.
“I badgered them like crazy,” he laughs. “I think a bunch of musicians did it all at the same time. My friend Gary Lightbody got a role as a minstrel, and my friend Will [Champion] from Coldplay was a drummer at the Red Wedding. Around the same time as they asked, I said, ‘Hey, can I have a go?’ And very flatteringly, they offered me a part, but Elbow was on tour in Australia so I couldn’t do it.”
Speaking of Elbow, what’s happening with them right now?
“We’re writing,” he states. “The boys are all indulging themselves in a similar fashion, in various solo projects and stuff. But we’re still writing. Weirdly, my solo record didn’t feel finished until I played it to the rest of Elbow. I suppose not weirdly actually, it kind of makes sense that their opinions are absolutely vital. So, yeah, we’re always writing. We’ve got some really interesting ideas.”