My Goodness,My Innes!

Long known as ardent followers of the ‘Good Times’ doctrine, genre-shifting sonic explorers Primal Scream are Dublin-bound this Arthur’s Day. As genial Scottish guitarist Andrew Innes explains, the three-decade-old act and the Black Stuff are a perfect match. In fact, when he’s jetting around the world, he can’t go too long without it.

“I remember being on tour and you start dreaming of sausages and Guinness,” Innes recalls. “We’d been away from home for so long. I got to this hotel in Japan and at the time it was generally two pounds for a pint back home. They were charging 12 pounds for a Guinness in this Japanese hotel and... I bought it! It was the best tasting pint of Guinness I’ve ever had. I was dreaming about sausages and Guinness for about six months and it finally took Japan to get a pint!”
Unfortunately for the six-stringer, the sausages had to wait.
“Yeah, that came later. It was Guinness and sushi, and I don’t know if that goes together as well...”
You could probably live on that.
“Haha, you could live on that, aye. That’s quite a healthy diet actually!”
Staff at Yo! Sushi, don’t be surprised to see several pale, long-haired Caledonian rockers stroll through the door on September 27. Though they’ll likely be in the pub, mixing business with pleasure. The prospect of a ferocious version
of ‘Swastika Eyes’ shaking the foundations of a small, crammed local is truly mouth-watering.
“Ohhh, that’d be proper wouldn’t it?!” he says, instantly warming to the idea. “I like it when it’s small and it gets loud and you can’t hear anything apart from guitars. That’s my kind of thing – smack out the music!”
It will certainly be a different environment to the last time they took to an Irish stage. Last Christmas, The Scream brought Screamadelica to the O2, their biggest headliner in this country to date.
“That was amazing. I can’t believe how well they’ve tarted that place up, it used to be that the rain would be coming through the ceiling! Now it’s actually a nice venue with great acoustics. We played at the old Point before and if it rained, it’d be piling down on the equipment onstage. There’d be about an inch of water in the dressing-room.”
A minor exaggeration, perhaps! Still, not even soggy Chelsea boots can dampen their spirits when they cross the Irish Sea. Innes reckons their great experiences here down through the years owe a lot to the shared sensibilities of the Scottish and Irish.
“They know what to do once the sun goes down,” he grins, knowingly.
You imagine this appreciation of the night is shared by a certain Manc bassist with a bowl cut. A member of Primal Scream since 1996, Mani left the band on good terms late last year to reunite with his old outfit, popular beat combo The Stone Roses. Do they miss his considerable presence?
“It’s been just a wee bit quieter, which you’ll understand if you’ve ever met him! But there’s modern things called text messages now and he’s quite loud in a text message if you can believe that.”
ALL TYPED IN CAPS, no doubt.
“Yeah! With plenty of exclamation marks! You get this message all in big capital letters and you can hear the voice shouting at you. So we still get him on a daily basis.”
They also were on hand to support The Stone Roses at Heaton Park.
“I’ve never seen one of my friends earn one million pounds in one hour before and I saw it that night! I was so happy for Mani, and the rest of them. You just forget what a great, great band they are. And the crowd was incredible. When you play the big stage at Glastonbury, you maybe get 50,000 people in front of you. But the Roses thing was 75,000 people and it went all the way back as far as you could see. It was incredible: you
just thought, ‘god, they’re all here to just hear that
one band’.”
Other than that and one or two more live appearances, this summer was chiefly taken up with recording the follow-up to 2008’s Beautiful Future. It’s been great revisiting the classic Screamadelica album, Innes reckons, but this is a band that should be looking forward.
“It’s always better playing new songs. I know crowds just want to hear hits and it’s good fun playing hits but, if you’re a musician, you want to get some new stuff to make it interesting for yourself. Seeing which new songs get the best reaction, what works live and things like that. It’s exciting.”
Expect to hear some of the fruits of their labour this Arthur’s Day.
“We’ve been in America finishing off the record. We’ve been working with another Irishman, David Holmes, out in LA. How does it sound? All weird! This sounds like it’s a catch-all but... strange psychedelia. And obviously working with him it’s quite – to use another terrible term – ‘filmic’. Quite big, there’s a lot of soundtrack references. I think it’s good, you’ll be hearing it soon.”
Given the way they have constantly reinvented their sound over the years, I imagine even the band themselves don’t know what to expect when they start a new record.
“No, you’re right there. Most people would say that you have to start out with an idea and you don’t. We went over to David’s house in Belfast. He invited us over just to see what would happen. He’d play us some old records and say, ‘listen to this vibe’. He’s very good at getting a ‘vibe’. Then you try and make some records from that and it seems to have worked.”
Plucking the bass will be the wonderful Debbie Googe of My Bloody Valentine. Is it true Bobby Gillepsie initally asked Bez if he’d put down the maracas and pick up the guitar?
“Aye, I think he did!” Innes laughs. “We love our Bez. That would have been something, that would have been a real ‘super group’, wouldn’t it? But it’s good, we’ve got Debbie from the Valentines, she’s great. She brings something different.”
Is there a Primal Scream initiation you have to go through?
“There probably used to be! By the time people join, though, we generally know them well already. But Debbie can put you under the table, I mean, you better watch the Guinness supply with her around! She’s deadly.”

Primal Scream play Arthur's Day on September 27.