Shooting the breeze with Bobby Gillespie is rather like tip-toeing through a minefield in the driving rain. Everything’s a bit murky; a sense of danger hangs in the air. One wrong step and you’re liable to set him off.
“Tabloid rubbish,” fumes the Primal Scream frontman, asked whether there’s any truth to the rumours that he led Kylie Minogue seriously astray. “She’s a lovely lass. I don’t know where that story came from. We’ve met her a few times, but that’s it.”
He’s slightly more ebullient as conversation turns to Primal Scream’s infamous 2005 Glastonbury set, at which Gillespie was reported to have given a Nazi salute during the song ‘Swastika Eyes’.
“What can I say?” says the Glasgow native. “Though in our defence, I do think we were the victims of a bad slot. We’d just finished our next record, and we hadn’t been playing live for a while. And we were put on between Basement Jaxx, I think, and Brian Wilson. It just didn’t suit us at all. Michael Eavis (Glastonbury’s organiser) told us it was a great set at the wrong time.”
Still, Primal Scream would lately seem to have packed their troubles away. Languid and rootsy, their new album, Riot City Blues, marks a retreat from the mid-European pallor of 2002’s Evil Heat. Some have described it as the Scream’s second attempt at reinventing themselves as a latter day Rolling Stones (following on from 1994’s Give Out But Don’t Give Up). For his part, Gillespie thinks they’ve made a fantastic party album.
“There’s a huge amount of Celtic soul in there,” he enthuses. “I can see where people are coming from when they describe it as more American, to the extent that it has more conventional rock songs than the previous record. But I can hear a lot of Pogues in that album too.”
Those who witnessed Primal Scream’s last headline show in Ireland, a rather fraught set at Dublin’s Red Box, can attest to the band’s explosive nature. When they weren’t delivering juddering chunks of disco-ified Krautrock, the five piece appeared constantly on the brink of a punch-up. Especially worked-up was bassist, Mani, who went mildly bonkers, at one point even squaring up to a roadie. Is this a band riding a constant wave-front of manic energy?
“There’s no tensions between us,” Gillespie insists. “We’re all brothers in Primal Scream. Maybe there’s tension within each of us. Perhaps that’s where the energy comes from.”
In view of their more laid-back present direction, can audiences expect a mellower Primal Scream to hit the road this winter?
“Not a bit of it. The stuff we played at the Red Box is still in our set, along with the pick of the new record. The intensity hasn’t changed. We’re still pushing things as far as we can take them.”
One notable absentee will be former My Bloody Valentine noize-smith Kevin Shields, a floating member of Primal Scream for the past four years.
“Kevin’s got other projects on the go,” Bobbie divulges. “He’s working on soundtrack stuff. I think he’s making an album with an Irish girl too. What’s her name again? Oh yeah, Gemma Hayes. We’ll miss him. He definitely brought something to the band and I’m really hoping we can play with him again in the future. He’s a brilliant musician and a great person.”