Boys Will Be Boys

“You’re dating a musician, are you?” Guy Garvey inquires, more curious neighbour than interviewee.

Affirmative.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
Cracking wise with journalists is one of many things the affable 38-year-old, who according to the Twittersphere looks more and more like Ricky Gervais every day, is remarkably good at.
As the banterful frontman of slow-burning art-rock sensation Elbow, he’s in charge of composing the melodies that tens of thousands of fans queue for hours to belt out in a swampy field, and at weaving the tales, vivid stories of scallywagging about greying suburbs as a boy or nursing heartbreak by drinking ‘until the doorman is a Christmas tree’, that the band have become synonymous with. On stage, he does most of the entertaining, his matey Mancunian charisma proving exceptionally handy, and there’s also the string, brass and choral arrangements, which
have progressively become part of the majestic
Elbow sound.
Despite the band’s Mercury Music Prize, their countless placements on international telly, and ginormous gigs like the one they’re about to do tomorrow, Guy’s also the only one who gets recognised, meaning that the task of courting the public inevitably falls into his hands.
To my delight, reports of Garvey’s innate loveliness have not been exaggerated. Within minutes of picking up the phone, we’re cheerfully trading anecdotes, perhaps not like old friends, but like frequenters of the same garden centre.
“It’s a beautiful day,” he chirps, echoing the words of ‘One Day Like This’, which he’ll perform at the Closing Ceremony of the 2012 Olympics in 30-odd hours’ time. “I’m looking at quite an amazing view
of London.”
It’s a city about which Garvey understandably has mixed feelings. On the one hand, he’s here rehearsing for the biggest show of the year, a star-studded, cheesetastic pop extravaganza that will be watched by an estimated 750 million people worldwide and send Elbow’s fourth album, The Seldom Seen Kid, soaring back into the charts. On the other, he’s just finished work on the band’s B-Sides album Dead In The Boot, which, featuring songs recorded as
far back as 2000, has left him in a particularly reflective mood.
“An awful lot’s happened in that 12 years,” he muses, “the way people listen to music and the way people make music and market music has changed. The political and social landscape of this country has changed massively and you end up having recordings that you made yourself, coming from a purely personal place, end up being a little bit of a social document. Two songs off the album are the most pointed political records we’ve made.”
He’s referring to an ethereal number called ‘Snowball’ and steel guitar-led ditty ‘The Long War Shuffle’, both of which were penned in response to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
“‘Snowball’ is hoping that the souls of the millions of dead would visit Tony Blair and his cabinet at the time when they die and haunt them for all eternity for what they did, because I was so appalled at how they ignored the country. I can’t come to London now without thinking about the march that three million people went on that they ignored, and dragged us into something that people are still dying and suffering from now.”
In revisiting the track for the new compilation, Garvey was surprised at how quickly those feelings came flooding back.
“It’s like pulling an aching tooth,” he says, “but it’s something you’ve got to get out.”
For another band, digging into the forgotten trenches of their back catalogue would be a fun rainy-day project, but for Elbow, who celebrated their 20th anniversary last month, it was a huge undertaking.
“There was about 70 to pick from,” Garvey says. “Then we narrowed that down and we had what we shall call a gentlemanly debate over the final selection! (laughs) Then Mark [Potter] chose the running order and did a great job. It’s a funny one, the running order, it’s a mythical beast on any record… When we finish an album, I usually end up with ten or 15 running orders that are all named after the time I came up with them, so there’ll be
one called Four O’Clock Pissed and another called Hungry At Heuston!”
Cynics will argue that B-Sides are little more than fat trimmed from the finished album, but tell that to Booker T, The Smiths and Gloria Gaynor, all of whom have had flip side recordings turn into signature songs (‘Green Onions’, ‘How Soon Is Now?’ and ‘I Will Survive’, respectively).
“B-Sides are often thought of as rejects or excess, and they’re not,” Garvey argues. “‘Lucky With Disease’ was done on a broken four-track… and musically it’s one of our favourite things we ever did! It’s even part of the dialogue between us when we’re writing music, quite often someone will say, ‘Oh yeah, it’s got a ‘Lucky With Disease’ kind of feel.’ The fact is, that’s ended up influencing a lot of what we’ve written and it’s dead exciting to me because I’m a geek! I’m an über fan geek. I’m a what-kind-of-underwear-did-they-wear-when-they were-writing-this-song? geek. I am über geek boy and hopefully between the photographs on the sleeve and the liner notes I’ve written and the bits and bobs of reportage, it’s a pure geek-out for Elbow fans.”
Elbow passed their 20-year anniversary only a few weeks ago; I’m presuming they rounded up the troops for a celebration?
“We did it every night, actually!” he laughs. “Every gig we did last year, we had a good drink with the audience. We didn’t do an official thing like a, ‘Happy anniversary, dear!’ because none of us can remember the exact date!”
The fact that the band went largely unnoticed for much of their career, Garvey admits, makes the milestone all the more special.
“We’re so lucky to have an income,” he stresses, “because we didn’t for half of those 20 years. Now, sending our kids to school and stuff, is just a fucking amazing feeling, a sort of boyhood fantasy of ours that we all dreamed about together and we’re actually realising it. But not just realising it, doing the most extraordinary things, seeing places in the world we would never have dreamt of going to and meeting heroes and having your heroes sort of say ‘hello’ to you and know who you are. It’s like, I met Robert Plant and Roger Daltrey and Elton John phoned Craig [Potter] not so long ago and things like that. It’s mental! People you would never expect getting into your tunes!
“You get a couple of funny ones,” he adds, slipping back into raconteur mode. “Like Geoff Hoon, the former Minister Of Defence, is a fan of the band and wanted to come see us play. It was when we were touring Leaders Of The Free World. I was like, ‘Who the fuck do you think I’m writing about here, man?’”
Dead In The Boot proves that these five old hands are open to exploring new musical formats (Garvey’s even plotting his own EP-only record label!), but something tells me that the LP tradition is safe in camp Elbow.
“I’ve always felt, and I guess musicians of my generation feel, that your album is the epitome, it’s a point, it’s the end product. For us, the end product isn’t a song, isn’t a live performance, it’s an album. I think some people see songs as individuals, and I guess their albums are collections of short stories, if you like. We like to think of our album as a novel
with chapters.”

Dead In The Boot – The B Sides now on sale on Fiction Records.