The Darling Bud of May

‘Good life came callin’ I fell under its spell and kept fallin’, throatily sings rockabilly star Imelda May on ‘Pulling The Rug’, the deliciously infectious opening track on her soon to be released new album, Mayhem. As with many of the beautiful Dubliner’s songs, there’s more than a touch of autobiography in the lyric.

After many impoverished years hard slogging on the Irish and UK nightclub circuit, the good life finally came callin’ for May a little over two years ago when the producers of Later... with Jools Holland rang the then 34-year-old Liberties girl and asked if she could step in as a last moment replacement for a virus-stricken Natalie Cole.
It turned out to be a life-changing phone call. Although she’d already self-released her critically acclaimed 2005 album, Love Tattoo, and supported Holland at several gigs, appearing on his influential TV show alongside the likes of Jeff Beck, Roots Manuva and Elbow proved a definite turning point in the musical fortunes of the singer once lazily described as “Ireland’s answer to Amy Winehouse”.
She’s basically been fallin’ into the good life ever since...
“Yeah, the Jools Holland thing definitely turned it around immediately – almost overnight,” says May, in her distinctive Dublin accent. “Everything went mad, the phones were hopping, and the record deal happened very soon afterwards. It’s such an influential show. Many people watch it. A lot of musicians in particular. It’s kind of like a mini-festival in a TV show, isn’t it?”
Having flown into Amsterdam from London, May is speaking to Hot Press from the back of a tour bus en route to the Lowlands Festival for yet another show. All in a night’s work. She’s barely slowed down in the last two years anyway. Since that Jools appearance, the impressively quiffed singer has been ticking the boxes beside many long-held dreams and ambitions. She has signed an international record deal, won a Meteor Award, watched Love Tattoo go four times platinum in Ireland (and sell in respectable quantities elsewhere), shared stages with the likes of U2, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Scissor Sisters, Van Morrison, Lionel Ritchie and, most recently, the first lady of rockabilly, Wanda Jackson. She even made an appearance at the Grammy Awards in LA last January – joining Jeff Beck on stage for a musical tribute to guitar legend Les Paul.
“It’s been completely mad,” she says. “It hasn’t really stopped. I’ve done loads of travelling, tours of America, and all that. Myself and Darrel [Higham; her guitarist and husband] have done a week of promotions, travelling all over England doing loads of radio – a regional radio tour to promote the new single. And yeah, we’re constantly on the move, which is great.
“That’s what we’ve always done. I’ve been constantly gigging for as long as I can remember – certainly in the last few years. I’m pretty happy with it all, I’m enjoying it, and I’m enjoying how it’s going. To be honest, it’s great to be able to do a job that you love, because I’ve done loads that I’ve hated, and I know there’s plenty of people still doing that.”
Do you ever find that all the touring and travelling gets a bit much?
“The only thing that I find hard is if I haven’t had any sleep,” she admits. “It’s difficult if you’re doing plenty of gigs and then you're not getting in ‘til all hours of the morning, and then you have to get up early and go off and get loads of flights. I'm used to the touring. We do an awful lot. It’s sometimes easier than others, really. If you have a lot of sleep, it’s great.
“If you have a tour bus, that helps a huge amount. Really, if you’re doing two flights a day and then loads of driving, it’s mostly the security in the airport that does your head in. I think most people get the same. If you’re doing that a couple of times a day, every day, it drives you mad after a while. You want to get to where you are going. There’s easy ways and hard ways. If you have a tour bus – that makes life a hell of a lot easier, and then it’s a joy, really. You pile your stuff in a suitcase, shove it on a bunk, and it’s like being in a caravan – you head off.”
What was it like appearing at the Grammys?
“Absolutely fantastic! We had a brilliant time. It was a weird one, really, sitting beside Quentin Tarantino on one side and Alice Cooper on the other. It was mental. Because we were performing you don’t get as much time to kind of... like, there’d be a load of people sitting back and partying. But we were backstage and stuff. There was loads of people with clip-boards and ear-pieces shouting your name trying to get you ready. You’re running back and forth all over the place backstage.
“I loved every minute. It was great. And all for two minutes on stage. I was delighted to be asked to play with Jeff. We love working with him. And to do it as a tribute to Les Paul, who was a musical genius. And thirdly, it was the Grammys, it was a great thing to have done.”
The way it actually happened, her Grammy appearance was so last-moment that she didn’t even have time to get a new dress.
“Oh, I wore me gold dress. Al Gare, the double-bass player in the band – his wife, Saffron, she made the dress for me for the O2 gig in Dublin last Christmas. And when Jeff Beck was saying about us doing the Grammys with him, basically the Grammys people were trying to get him to do it with somebody really famous. He kept saying, ‘No, no, I want to do it with Imelda and Darrel. I want them to do it. I want Imelda to sing it.’ And they were trying to get a famous singer.
“He kept pushing and pushing. And as I was hearing it, I never for one second thought that I’d actually get to go. I thought, ‘Yeah, it’s really nice of him to try, but it’ll never happen’. We only got a week’s notice, really. When he said, ‘Yeah, you’re going,’ I nearly collapsed. I didn’t have a chance to get another dress made, and I was rooting through my wardrobe thinking, ‘What will I wear? What will I wear?’ And I had that dress that Saffron made me for The O2 in Dublin, I thought, ‘Ooh, I’ll wear me gold one’. I thought, ‘Gold for the Grammys, that’ll do nicely’.”
Somehow or other, in the middle of all this musical madness, May and her band found the time to record Mayhem. It’s an accomplished album that will almost undoubtedly further her international career. May’s heart may be living in the '50s, but its 13 original songs (the album closes with a cover of Gloria Jones/Soft Cell classic ‘Tainted Love’) see her continue to develop her uniquely modern fusion of classic musical genres – made up of surf guitars, blues and rockabilly – but with an edge that comes from some even more eclectic influences, showcasing her exceptional songwriting talent. 
“Mayhem was basically recorded in fits and starts. It’s been a year, really, from start to finish, but we certainly didn’t spend a year working on the album, if that makes sense.”
When we last spoke in December, you told me it was already in the can and set to be released.
“Yeah, I thought it was,” she laughs. “I had two weeks. It was the longest period of time that I was in the studio, and got the majority of the recordings down. And then, after that – after I spoke to you – I wrote a couple of songs. The record company liked those and said they thought some of the songs that we had already recorded needed to be changed, to get them right. There was more tweaking, and plenty of mixing to be done.”
As with her debut, Mayhem was produced by May herself.
“I’ve worked on it so hard. We all have, we have all been in recording it, and you know obviously with me – I produced Love Tattoo as well as this one, but I put more effort and time into this, and then sat in mixing it. I got these great producers called Andy White and Gavin Goldberg in at the end to help me because I had gotten it to a certain stage, and it needed that extra ten percent. You know, mixing is such a fine art. And I’m really happy with the end result. I went through every part from beginning to end. I have listened to every tape that everybody did, and picked the best one. And you know, I really dived into the whole thing.”
One of the standout tracks, ‘Kentish Town Waltz’, is a love song to Darrel about their years of poverty and struggle when she first moved over to London in her mid-twenties: “And those stews that lasted three days into four/And the dreaded bailiffs return to our door.”
“That’s exactly what it was about, yeah. I wrote that about being broke and living in London. I had a tough time when we moved over first, I found it quite hard, yeah – the usual. I actually get a bit emotional singing it sometimes.”
Hopefully the rip-roaring ‘Sneaky Freak’ – about a paranoid and obsessive partner - isn’t also based on fact: “I’m behind you, I’m watchin’ your back/I’m gonna find you, look in every crack/I know your passwords, I cracked your codes/I know you backwards/I even searched your clothes/because I’m a sneaky freak.”
“Ah well, everything I write is a little bit autobiographical,” she laughs. “No the way that song came about was that I was reading a thing in the newspapers that said a lot of women learn how to use a computer purely for checking up on their fellas. I thought that was hilarious, that that’s what spurs them to learn more quickly. That made me laugh. But no, I didn’t write that about myself.
“There’s a movie called Wild Target – they asked if they could use ‘Johnny’s Got A Boom Boom’ on it, and then they said have you got any more stuff? And they used ‘Mayhem’, and then they sent me a scene where Emily Blunt is riding a bicycle in it, and she is supposed to be stealing things and checking up on people and stuff. They said, will you write a song for that scene? I wrote the song. And then they asked this guy to do an instrumental as well, and they wound up using the instrumental. I was left with this song, and I liked it. I was doing it at the gigs, and it was working. I thought I would put it on the album. At least I got a tune out of it!”
Having appeared in a Fish Fingers ad when you were 14, what are your thoughts on using your songs in advertising?
“Oh fine. I mean I wasn’t in the Fish Fingers advert. I sang on it. I wasn’t on the telly or anything like that. Using my songs on advertising? I wouldn’t have a problem with it at all, as long as it was for the right advert it would be great. I don’t know if I would be thrilled to have one about nappies, or anything. It depends on what they put with it. But yeah, if it’s the right advert I think, ‘Why not?’ It would be great.
“I’d love to have one of my songs used on a Guinness ad, actually. That would be the ultimate one. They use such fantastic songs and they have beautiful, brilliant adverts.”
Another memorable track, ‘Psycho’, has a wild video set, appropriately enough, in an insane asylum.
“We had great fun making the ‘Psycho’ video, yeah. Terrific. I even got my dog involved in it. It was done in Pinewood Studios, and the director was Chris Cottam, a fantastic guy, you know. I got a load of ideas sent through to pick from, from different people. I really went for that one because it was exactly what I had in my head.
“And we had a ball making it, we really did. And it was great having the guy who could pop his eyes out – Antonio [Francis] was his name. I think he’s only one of only 11 in the world; he’s in the Guinness Book Of Records, and he’s showing us how fast he can pop his eyes out. Oh, it was mad! It’s a great talent to have.”
Speaking of mad, has Imelda heard about the suspected suicide at the Swell Season show in California last night? Turns out she hasn’t... [a man jumped to his death from the roof above the stage landing feet away from horrified singer Glen Hansard].
“Oh my god, that’s awful!” she says. “That’s really dreadful!”
Thinking about it as a performer, though, she doesn’t have too much sympathy for the jumper.
“It’s not fair on the audience, it’s not fair on the band, and not fair on the family either – making a big spectacle of it. That’s really unfair. That was a nasty thing to do. You couldn’t be a nice person and do that. That’s wanting to be noticed at all costs, isn’t it?”
Being on the road you must encounter all sorts of strange types. Do you ever get any weirdos or stalkers?
“Ah, you know, you always meet weirdos,” she laughs. “Some weirdos are fantastic – weirdos in a good way. We do get hecklers and they’re mad as a brush and sometimes they can almost make the gig for ya, you know? We had one guy in an audience that wanted to get up on stage and have his photo taken with us. He was mad as a brush, and the whole audience were laughing their heads off, and it was a good night. But bad weirdos? Ah, a couple, but I think probably the best thing to do is ignore them, really. Because that’s the one thing that really gets to them – when you totally ignore them and give them no attention. The best thing you should do. Get on with your life.”
With such a busy schedule, have you been back to Ireland much recently?
Does it bother you that you no longer have the biggest quiff in Irish music?
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Jedward!”
“Jedward?” she laughs. “I suppose, yeah. They must use good hairspray.”
What do you think of the Grimes twins?
“I don’t really know them. I don’t know the music. I can’t tell you. All I know is I passed Vicar St. when they were on one night, and it was absolutely full of really small people with paper quiffs on. They certainly got the place going in the area that night. It was full of kids everywhere.”
Her tour bus is arriving at the Lowlands Festival entrance, and it’s time for Imelda May to go and prepare to entertain the masses. Before she hangs up, though, she has this to say about Mayhem.
“Oh, I’m happy with how it’s going, and I’m really excited about the new album coming out because it means... you know, we have been playing a lot of the songs in the gigs anyway, but you can’t do all of the songs on the album too early because you have nothing then to do the launch with. Like, da-da! You know, it’s the new album that you’ve been playing already!
“I’m dying to get my teeth into the new songs. I can’t wait for the album to come out, and I’m hoping it gets a good reaction. I’m curious to see how it does, you know. I hope it goes well, but I’m pretty happy with the end result whatever happens. And I’ve stuck to my guns on it. I’ve fought many battles to keep it how I want it, you know. And I’m glad I’m stubborn. I’m glad I won.”