Blonde Ambition
They've been the 'nearly' band of British rock for half a decade now. Might Delays' hour finally be at hand?
Stuart Clark, 05 Mar 2008
Delays mainman Greg Gilbert is relaxing poolside on his Cap Ferrat estate prior to the band heading out on a globe-straddling tour that’s set to replace The Police at the top of the box-office charts.
Most of the travelling will be done in his own Gulfstream G500, which can be spied behind the stables where his prize Arabian… sorry, I just slipped into a parallel universe there.
Gilbert is actually freezing his crown jewels off in that most un-Mediterranean of locales, Southampton. A tour does indeed await, but will be conducted by good old-fashioned bus and take in venues that are only marginally bigger than Sting’s dressing-room.
A shocking state of affairs given the perfect pop that Delays – we’ve told you before, there is no “the” – have been peddling for the last six years.
“We’re not a ‘haircut’ band who are in the NME every week, so we knew it was going to be a slow-build,” Greg says philosophically. “Our third album – Everything’s The Rush – is coming out in April, which is a big one for us ‘cause we’ve switched from Rough Trade to Snow Patrol and Kate Nash’s label, Fiction. Geoff Travis is a fantastic guy, but Rough Trade were too busy trying to keep Pete Doherty on the straight and narrow to pay us much attention.”
Gilbert might not live in a flash continental gaff, but he’s recorded in one.
“Yeah, we wanted this to be a sunny record so we went down to Youth’s châteaux in Grenada, which has the most amazing views of the Sierra Nevada mountains,” he beams.
Youth being a former member of the Most Out There Band In The History Of Rock ‘N’ Roll, a.k.a. Killing Joke.
“He’s still pretty cosmic. There was one day he went missing, and was eventually found lying outside on the path with stones on his chest and his head, realigning his chakras. We had so many discussions about philosophy, wicker, spirituality and ghosts, which is something I’m really interested in.”
So much so that a couple of years back Delays guested on an episode of Living TV’s Most Haunted.
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