"Sorry, someone’s just rung the bell. I’ll go and answer it. (Dog barks, door opens, muted conversation, door closes, dog barks again, interviewee returns…) It was a guy delivering a package of records. I don’t even know what’s in it. I normally order stuff after a large gin before I go to bed!”
The hi-tech equipment littering his Belfast home proves that he’s no Luddite, but David Holmes is an old-fashioned music fan at heart with a mountainous vinyl collection that’s vigorously mined on his Late Night Tales mix, which drops on October 21.
Part of the same curated series that has allowed Franz Ferdinand, MGMT, Belle And Sebastian, Arctic Monkeys, Fatboy Slim, The Flaming Lips and Sly & Robbie to show off their impeccable taste, it also finds Holmer teaming up with BP Fallon and Stephen Rea and Jon Hopkins for respective tributes to ex-Wings man Henry McCullough and Seamus Heaney.
“BP is one of a kind,” David enthuses. “I’ve always been attracted to unique people and voices. I got a call from him saying, ‘I’m coming up to Henry McCullough’s funeral. I’m heartbroken; I’ve known him since 1966. Could I stay at your place and, if it’s not too late when we come back from the funeral, do you fancy doing something in the studio?’ I was really deep into Late Night Tales at that stage and knew the trajectory of what I was trying to say. I started messing around on the piano in my living room and thought, ‘Oh, that sounds cool!’ I took it to my studio, where I’d just got this mint condition Vox Continental organ from the ‘60s, and fleshed the track out. I texted BP and said, ‘Write something about Henry.’ When he arrived at my house, he’d only managed to come up with the outro – ‘My friend the end, I know you’re not coming back again’ – so after a cup of coffee and a smoke, I stuck the headphones on him and it all came flooding out. It was the most perfect eulogy done in one take. Towards the end he croaks up and talks about missing and loving Henry; it’s such a moving recording. To capture a moment like that… it was almost as if Henry McCullough was in the room.”
With neither Beep nor David being overly proficient in the guitar department, they called on the services of a Mr. N. Gallagher to complete the track.
“Because Henry was such an amazing player it felt like we had to have a bit of guitar on it,” Holmer proffers. “Noel also knows BP – who doesn’t? – and is a fan of Henry’s from when he was in Wings with Paul McCartney. There’s a genuine connection as opposed to me just getting my famous friend in.”
As first revealed in this here fortnightly magazine, David has been working with Noel on the new High Flying Birds album.
“We’re half-way in,” says the man in the producer’s chair. “I’m back in the studio with him in two weeks. We’re going to be finishing off some tracks and taking others to the next level. Noel does all his lyric writing when I’m not there, which is great because I can go in and say, ‘What have you got for us today?’ He’s brilliant to work with, super-creative and a really clever musician.”
While David Bowie-style reinvention is unlikely, one of Noel’s main reasons for hiring Holmer is that he wanted to be taken out of his comfort zone.
“If you’re a singer-songwriter you generally sit down with an acoustic guitar and work out the chords and melody of the song. Then you work out the words or the words come first – whatever your process is. I wanted to turn that on its side a little bit. It’s for Noel to talk about the record rather than me, but one thing I will say is that people are going to be really surprised when they hear it.”
We got a little taster of what might be in store last year when David enlisted a kiddies’ choir to completely transform ‘The Girl With The X-Ray Eyes’ for Noel’s Where The City Meets The Sky: Chasing Yesterday The Remixes EP.
“I immediately heard the influence of David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ on ‘The Girl With The X-Ray Eyes’, which made me think of another great version by the Langley School’s Project,” he explains. “After listening to the lyrics on repeat for a few hours I thought they had a real picture book sensibility so I called my daughter’s primary school. Nina’s choir teacher, who’s a massive Noel fan, was totally up for it. The kids rehearsed for five days and I stopped by and recorded it in their assembly hall!”
The school in question being St Michael’s on the
Ravenhill Road.
“I had to bribe the children to get the performances out of them,” Holmer chuckles. “At that age their attention spans aren’t the greatest, so to keep them focused I went, ‘Right, you’re all on £10 for nailing the third verse.’ It’s like everything in life – money talks!”
Did he warn Noel what was coming?
“No, I just sent it to him and remarkably he didn’t tell me to fuck right off with myself!”
In addition to Late Night Tales and Noely G duties, David has also been assembling the soundtrack to Steven Soderbergh’s NASCAR heist movie, Logan Lucky. The pair, of course, go waaaaaaay back.
“I’ve known Steven for, God, twenty years now. When I did Ocean’s Eleven with him, I had to be close to the set but now with file sharing you can work remotely, which means I’m no longer spending half of my life on a plane. This is the first time I’m seeing the dailies literally hours after they’ve been shot. It’s great because you get a feel for the tone. You’re working with a director who’s been living with this idea sometimes for years. It’s very much collaboration; you’re giving them ideas but you’re also listening to theirs, and through this dialogue and file exchanging you’re getting closer to the prize. I don’t think I’ve ever got a gig where my agent has put my name forward for a film. The work always comes to me from the director, so you know you’re not being imposed on them by the studio, which can happen.”
Holmer celebrated winning an Ivor Novello for his and Keefus Ciancia’s score to London Spy, which stars Jim Broadbent and the divine Charlotte Rampling, in May by going on a two-day bender.
“I’m actually very tame when it comes to drinking and partying,” he pleads. “You get to a certain point in your life where you think, ‘I’ve had enough.’ As David Lynch says, ‘Focus on the donut rather than the hole’. Music is a precious thing that you should never take for granted. I won an Ivor in 2015 for ’71 and really didn’t expect to win again, so it was a great excuse to stay out late and get drunk.”
Did he indulge in any celebrity schmoozing in the ultra-posh Grosvenor House where the gong-giving ceremony was held?
“I usually keep to myself at these things, but the year before I was chatting to Bob Geldof who’s just a man on a mission, constantly, from what I can gather. He turned up when I was in the studio with Noel. Bob was doing his W.B. Yeats documentary, which was great, at the time. I obviously made zero impression on him because he didn’t know who I was at the Ivors until I told him! If you come across someone who’s a real hero, like, what do you say? I went to see Radiohead do A Moon Shaped Pool in London and spent no more than ten minutes at the after-party. Nick Cave was sitting there and his last album had such a profound effect on me; it really was a very close friend for a period. Like all great records, I’ve returned to it again and again. I decided to just get out of the building or otherwise I’d have gone over and blubbered something embarrassing.”
Music was David’s salvation when his beloved mum, Sarah, passed away in 1996.
“Like most Irish sons and their mothers, we were super close,” he reflects. “When she passed, I found it very hard to grieve. The first film soundtrack I inherited off her was John Barry’s Midnight Cowboy, the title-track of which came on by chance when I was on holiday. The floodgates just opened. I cried like a fucking baby as all these memories came pouring back. Thankfully I was on my own, so I could let it all out. That’s the power of music.”
Does Holmer ever look at his IMDB page, which also notes his musical contributions to Code 46, Analyze That, Hunger, Resurrection Man, Haywire, The Fall and Perrier’s Bounty, and think, “How the fuck did all this happen?”
“I don’t really look at life like that,” he insists. “I’m happiest when I’m just in my wee studio and when my mates call round and we have a smoke and a drink. You enjoy those moments like the Ivors, but the real award is actually just being fucking busy and working with good people. You wake up and go, ‘Wow, I’m working with Steven Soderbergh this month; I’m doing Noel’s album, I managed to complete my Late Night Tales.’ I grew up in a very strong, working-class family whose biggest currency was love. It was a very fucked up time, but thanks to them I came out of it grounded. I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t proud when ’71 won the Ivor Novello, but at the end of the day it’s a fucking piece of metal.”
If you happen to be in Belfast on October 15, Holmer is throwing a launch party in the Maple Leaf Club for Late Night Tales, which will include live appearances by BP Fallon; fellow Belfastians (if it’s not a word, it should be!) Documenta who wrap another of the originals, ‘Love Is A Ghost’, up in a warm duvet of My Bloody Valentine noise, and Barry Woolnough, the maverick Londoner who contributes opening battle cry, ‘Great Father Spirit In The Sky’. Glasses will also be raised to Seamus Heaney who’s the inspiration for the haunting spoken word outro, ‘Elsewhere Anchises’.
“Before Jon Hopkins became the world famous and respected composer he is today I had the privilege of doing some sessions with him,” Holmer reminisces fondly. “This is something that we started eight or nine years ago and the original idea was less than 90 seconds long. I always loved the feeling it gave me so I decided to develop it for this album as I felt it fitted into what I was trying to say. The words came last and this extract was shown to me by my friend and one of Belfast’s finest actors Lalor Roddy because he thought it had a lot in common with a short film I directed called I Am Here, which deals with family and reconnection in the after world. It comes from a book called AENEID VI which was the last work Seamus Heaney translated before he passed, which made it even more special as I consider this to be a very Northern Irish themed album. When I first read it I was stunned by the similarities and wrote a letter to Mick Heaney – Seamus’ son - asking for permission. The Heaney Family gave me it, which I am forever grateful for and the next step was securing the voice of another Northern Irish great, Stephen Rea. It was a perfect way to finish this album.”
Also expect to hear a song or six from Late Night Tales next month when, courtesy of Hennessy Lost Fridays, Holmer plays an all killer, no filler DJ set in the RHA Gallery.
“It’ll be five hours of music, so we’ll be going everywhere from lush and experimental to old school funk and party anthems that will have everyone in the room boogie-ing!” David enthuses. “Deejaying is how it all started for me and is something I don’t just love but have to do. We’re going to have fun in Dublin!”