David Gray

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0:39Hello and welcome to The Midpoint. My guest today is synonymous with a very joyful period in my life and maybe yours too. Without getting too nostalgic and sentimental, his incredibly successful White Ladder album was an enormous hit from the summer of 2001, which is just when I got married to Kenny. So songs like Sail Away and This Year's Love are beautifully evocative to me. David Gray gets this kind of reaction, I think, from quite a lot of people of our generation. The album was recorded in his bedroom and it certainly changed his life. It produced five hit singles and, as he says, laid the way for the likes of Sheeran, Blunt and Bay, men bearing their souls on a guitar.

1:19As a baby, David was diagnosed with a stomach disease that had almost killed him and he underwent life-saving surgery, something he says made him fearless and left him with an unwavering self-belief. That, combined with what sounded like an idyllic childhood in West Wales, allowed his creative soul to be free. So I want to get into all of that and also how making music has changed for him with the advent of AI and what it means to be a midlife rocker. David Gray, welcome to The Midpoint. You are synonymous with, I think, people of our generation I have such affection because I was when I was thinking about this today and I was writing your introduction, White Ladder kind of had this wonderful kind of launch.

2:02Well, it had two launches, didn't it? But 2001 is when it kind of hit the mainstream, if you like. And that was the summer I got married. And so the following year, all these singles are coming out. And when I think back to it, it's just a period of this joy and hope and optimism, because in my personal life, that's what was going on. I was in the first throes of a beautiful relationship and everything was great. But you get that quite a lot, I think, don't you, from people, that they have a real emotional connection with that album. I think through 2000, in the UK, 2000, 2001, 2002, White Ladder sort of ruled.

2:38It was one of the records that was just sort of ubiquitous and it sort of bound into people's lives. It's stitched into the fabric of their lives, songs that they heard when they were on their honeymoon or when they got married, whatever. So I do get that a lot. Yeah, it's a wonderful thing. I think we all realised when it happened what an extraordinary gift we'd been given because, you know, we were a part of everyone's lives. We didn't own it anymore. It was nice to have it taken off our hands, to be honest. Really? Well, yeah, because, you know... Send it out into the world. Exactly. That's what you want to happen to your music.

3:07You want it to be taken by people emotionally and stitched into the way that they live and feel their existence. So I think before that, we kind of had our stuff and we were desperately trying to prove that it was worth listening to. So there was a moment when it was kind of just taken off our shoulders and it was pure magic. Because one of the other things I read is you said from you and from launching the album spawned a generation of men and their guitars singing kind of from their souls. And then I was thinking, oh, gosh, yeah, think back before that. And actually men on their own with a guitar wasn't really a thing, was it?

3:41When I started out, you just couldn't get arrested in the music industry trying to be the singer-songwriter. sort of, you know, which is exactly what I was. So it was a, I ploughed a lonely furrow through the early 90s, certainly. So it was, and then of course it's all changed. So yes, there was this, I think it wasn't so much just that I maybe offered some inspiration with my music to other people who felt a similar way. It was also that the industry, of course, cottoned on to the fact that there was money in it and suddenly the doors just opened for other David Grays or types of David Gray, if you like.

4:16It was all boy bands, really, wasn't it? I don't know. I blocked it out. Yeah, it was. It was harsh. I used to work in commercial radio and there are so many songs that give me a bit of PTSD from that period that I think back that I had to play in commercial radio. But you also, something happened to you as a child, which interestingly, I think, connects directly to you having the confidence to think, actually, this is going to happen. I'm going to release this album and I'm going to change maybe the direction of travel. You had a serious illness as a child. Oh, I see. At an operation. Well, I wasn't even a child.

4:48I was aiming to become a child. I was a newborn infant. Yeah, I've mentioned this. This is a recent thing that I've sort of thrown onto the table, I suppose. I do think it had a profound effect on me. I was born with a condition called pyloric stenosis, which is where the muscle at the top of your stomach sort of seizes and won't let anything. So it started off, I couldn't really take food down. and then after a couple of weeks I couldn't even take water and obviously that was the crucial point when they had to get me into hospital but I'd been misdiagnosed for the first couple of weeks and I think like you know young mothers are generally patronized by doctors a little bit with their problems so the sort of hysteria of motherhood or whatever so my mum was sort of sent away several times then of course it proved to be this thing my dad had sort of funny stories of holding me at the back door as I projectile vomited down the garden.

5:42He was really impressed by how far I could. So even if that's a sort of competitive sign, my son can throw up further than yours. So that's sort of, they say that the very beginning of your life is a sort of perhaps the most profound period of your life in terms of shaping the way that you think and feel about the world. So if I think that I was starving for the first few weeks, then I had this operation, so I've got a huge scar because I was only tiny. And then I was in a sort of isolated situation where I couldn't be held for the next bit. So, yes, exactly, you know, the bottom lip's coming out, Gabby.

6:19It was sort of kind of harrowing at first experience. So I think I'm still yelling now. I'm still howling, looking for emotional comfort and trying to make the world into a safe place. So I think that's a key sort of trying to change things, making a world within a world that's very much why creativity i think maybe i had that in my jeans anyway but why it's it just won't lose its grip on me i i need more i i make and then i have to make again you made that connection yourself or have you had some kind of therapy yeah therapy yeah uh therapy uh i found hugely beneficial i and if we can go on to that with this is a midlife podcast I guess when I was getting into the middle of my life I had problems of sort of taking on too much responsibility I'm a bit mad you know I'm not easy to live with in so many ways but I guess at that point I had everything so this would probably be late 2000s and all the success had come so I could see the responsibility of being a musician I could see the responsibility towards my music, my audience, my manager, my record company, to my children, my wife, but I sort of left myself out of the whole equation.

7:36I wasn't making space for me outside of that. And I think that over time, I became deeply unhappy and I couldn't really work it out. So I asked a friend of mine who's a doctor, who's also does a bit of therapy, if he could recommend someone. So I've started to see someone. It was a strange process because this was psychodynamic therapy where it's not like they point out what the rules are and I like to have kind of goals you know like okay where are we going you know it's like you just talk and it's but even so perhaps I didn't really hit it off with the other person entirely but through that following that process and persevering with it it does hold a mirror up and you start to look at aspects of your life and consider them and it was the beginning of me sort of unpicking some of the knots that were inside and starting to make small amounts of space in my life for doing things that I love that are just for me or just space for me and that had a profound effect on relationships within my family but just the way that I am and those are sort of founding principles now of each year that goes by I have to build a bit of space in here and there to do some of the things that I need to do.

8:45And it just does me the world of good. So my equilibrium now is profoundly improved from what it was back then. But you have to remember also within the broader context of what had happened, this amazing opportunity came. So success came knocking. It was my fourth album. It didn't happen overnight. We toured three years on that album. And then there was another album which went to number one, then another, and we just kept going. Then the arse fell out of the music industry, not to put too fine a point on it. So record sales were a thing of the past. The only way to make money was to tour. And I had a big fan base in America.

9:21I had a fan base all over the world. I was just basically touring and touring and touring and touring. And, you know, that will destroy anybody. So that's sort of pulled at the fabric of my life. And when I look at it all now, I'm glad to have come through it all relatively unscathed. There's a few dents in the DG flight case. But I think I've basically made it through the touring process pretty well. So, yeah, I mean, I'm good at rolling my sleeves up and getting on with things. I'm a determined, no-nonsense kind of person. I don't need to be backed up all the time. Come on, Dave, you can do it.

9:55It's like I've got strong sort of Roy Keane-like sort of inner motivation, if you like. But that can be destructive too. That can work against you. And it certainly did. So I think that the problem was I wasn't giving myself a break. And even to think like that seems so radical and so open-ended. I was a bit scared to do so. Take yourself out of the machine. It was exactly, yeah, and I was a part of a machine. I mean, the music industry, they call it that. That's what it is. It was an industrial scale of performing and recording. Was there a fear that if you did hop out of the machine for a while that it wouldn't let you back in?

10:28Well, that's one of the sort of myths that has a ring of truth to it, of course, because your star rises and it cools incredibly fast. So I've always sort of had some faith that what I'm trying to do is more sort of long-term. But, yeah, what you're saying is true. And that can be used. You can be manipulated by people who are working with you to make you feel that insecurity very deeply. It doesn't take much. So certainly that was a part of it, yeah. So many people around you depend on you, don't they, for their livings. And obviously there's a pressure there, isn't there? Yeah, even the band, who sort of, I'd like to think, have fondness for me.

11:10We've all seen Spinal Tap. I hope we have. So let's qualify that statement. Yes, as you said, they're reliant on the thing happening. So they get paid when they're touring or when this is happening. And they're watching. So there's an implication that, you know, well, so yeah. As I say, I could see my responsibility to the band, to the management, to this, to that. But I found it harder to see the responsibility to myself. But now I've won that ground. And it's one of the things that's chiefly sort of restored my sense of happiness and balance in my life because I won't give it back up again. I know that it's important.

11:54And I think another thing is that if you've got a young family, which I did have at the time I'm talking about, you know, I mean, I missed so much of their young lives. to have taken like if I did 130 dates on an album campaign that's a lot so that's tip of the iceberg that you've got the promo campaign you've got to get there go around there's a day off for every let's say every two or three show days there's a day off you've got travel days you can double that figure so that's basically a way for most of a year three quarters of a year to do that maybe more so having taken all that time to go hey I need some time for me you know that's what I'm feeling right now I found that sort of juxtaposing that sort of idea was was a bit controversial so how could I even how how could I have the nerve to ask for that so I had to sort of scale back the touring ambition a little bit in order to make space for other things when you were on stage and you were doing the thing that you love was that the was that the kind of payback or the you know the moment where it was all worth it all that other stuff did you still love being on stage and the audience's reaction to you yeah of course i mean that moment is is key to everything um it's the love of the audience the but hopefully you go kind of beyond that you're all in the same melting pot when when a gig really happens everyone's living the same moment together band and audience and something extraordinary can happen it's not like that every night sometimes you're working uh the same time you know i remember writing in my diary don't forget how boring touring can get and by that i didn't mean the gigs um although they can become incredibly repetitive so it's it's just it's a it's a sensory deprivation chamber so to enable the sort of vivid couple of hours that happen on stage you need to be there as I say like three quarters of a year for that that couple of hours at the end of the day you've got to make sure that that really happens you you're in hotel rooms buses I mean I'm not saying this with any a sort of sense of complaint this is just a fact you're you're you're in some dark spaces you're on buses you're in airports, you know, we all know how much fun they are.

14:18And, you know, you're being driven down roads, you're in a new hotel room, if you're lucky, and you've got a day off or whatever, you're constantly in these. So you're not in nature, all the things that I would find uplifting and sort of give me a bit of energy back. You're kind of in these and you're locked in with all these other people as well. So all these programs, these reality TV programs that are based on this sort of hot housing, this sort of anxiety and sort of tension, you know, as a form of entertainment. That is very much a problem. That wear and tear is quite profound. So that's how managing all the people involved and their ups and downs.

14:57I mean, music attracts misfits, bipolar, you know, borderline autistic people. That's kind of what it does. So you've got these bunch of lunatics with you and you're a bit deranged yourself and you've got to sort of, but as the key guy, the main guy on the mic, whose name's on the ticket, I have to make sure that it all glues together and that maintenance is a massive part of touring. So I think that there's a lot of wear and tear with that, holding that together. If the industry hadn't changed, and that's, you know, a big word and obviously hindsight's a wonderful thing, would you have preferred being in studios more and not touring?

15:36Is that where your real happy place is, when you're hearing something come together that you've imagined. Did White Ladder come together in your bedroom? Spare bedroom, yeah. So it's a home recording, White Ladder. Is that the most joyful part? No, writing is thrilling, but obviously more solitary. Recording is incredibly exciting because you're venturing and it's incredibly stimulating. Hopefully trying not to repeat yourself. you're kind of feeling blind for something that might be there. That's what the writing process is like. I love those processes. I used to love painting as well when I was at art school, and I still do when I do it.

16:22I love that process. But then ultimately the thing about music is it goes out into the world and then it has to meet the audience and you have to wear that music in front of them and see what happens. now if if if I do a tour and I'm not playing any new music and there's nothing new to it there's no new facets to what I'm doing that's where I think it gets boring for me it's just jukebox kind of stuff there's a moment for that there are there's the right occasion when that's entirely the right fit for what if you're playing a massive show you've only got 45 minutes don't mess about with a sort of 25 minute new song about making Blackberry jam while being stoned or something it's like um it's best to sort of function yeah figure the set out so that it's going to hit the right notes and maybe build a little bit of space in there for something that people haven't heard before but um yeah so but when you get out on that stage as I say what happens up there well that's the thing I really need and I think even before I was a musician I had there was a moment in my young life when uh first of all I was born in Manchester parents both from Manchester and dad wanted out of the family business he was the youngest and we went down they wanted to get a long way away and uh it was lots of different places in the offing what was the family business uh it was bakery and sort of grocery business in Manchester that his dad had set up um so he wanted to go somewhere far away Cornwall somewhere I don't know somewhere that you can't really get to from Manchester so they could sort of start again so They didn't know what they were doing.

17:58But we moved down to West Wales to a tiny little fishing village called Solve. And for the kind of person that I was, which is nature obsessed and loved playing out, it was the perfect thing, perfect time. And I remember just getting into the garden. We lived in this tiny little fishing cottage. And there was the grib in the hill behind with all the trees and bluebell wood. And I said, whoa, like action man can really get out into this. I had like this, suddenly my garden was just like miles of stuff, the beach, the shoreline, the river. You were talking about the audience. A key moment of going on stage for the very first time.

18:35I'd been cast, badly cast, in my opinion, in previous school plays as, you know, Shepherd Three or whatever in the Nativity. They didn't see my potential. But I got to Solva primary school. And anyway, first of all, I was in this kind of, in Manchester, I was bright. so my parents had me in the school and all the peer groups sort of said oh you should put him in altering and prep altering and prep get him into Manchester grammar so I was being streamlined to go to Manchester grammar which is where I would have ended up how different my life would have been so they they took me down to um West Wales and I was in the just the village primary school it was like a child's Christmas in Wales it was sort of idyllic Dylan Thomas beautiful people no sort of obvious materialism or I remember it used to be like how many pens have you got in your sort of pencil case kind of you know 30 colored felt tips in mine I've got 50 it was like so competitive Manchester it was this kind of nouveau riche environment it was awful actually that's sort of what I came from down to this idyllic where there was no I had to learn Welsh I had to do it anyway I was how's your Welsh now about It's absolutely disappeared, but I batter men in.

19:47You know, I've got, I can do the accent. Yeah, lovely Welsh. But yeah, I can speak a little bit. So it was an uncompetitive primary school. Totally. So it just took all that away. And it was this magical world, actually. And anyway, there was the school play. And I was younger, but I was very, I had very good memory. So I could remember things. Anyway, The Wizard, it was The Wizard and the Witch, the main play. the wizard became ill on show day and they they sort of cast to the school who's going to replace the wizard who's going to replace the wizard and even though I was only nine I got this starring role in the school play but I had one day to learn the lines but they didn't have time to teach me the dance routines or the the musical but so those so I had to improvise so I learned the lines and playing opposite Diane Diane Phillips who was the witch and I was a smash basically I must have been so cute so when it came to the musical bits I just made up my own wizard dances and I was dancing around the place and the crowd went wild and even though the stage was only about four inches high uh and we just had a few lights on and it was dark and the rest there was probably only about 60 parents out there I just remember the feeling of being up there and I just loved the freedom of being on the stage and I got it straight away I thought the stage gives you a power to be something that everyone else wants to see you be uh it's a safe space where you can enact and and show feelings and make people laugh and and it's sorry excuse me uh it's anyway just the penny just dropped and and that that's why i pursued music and a life on the stage even though i was quite kind of shy and solitary in my habits in some ways uh i i saw that what i got when i was on stage was I got to be somebody else I got to do something else out in front of the public so I've that's why I chose music over painting for example drawing and painting which is quite a sort of isolated solitary activity I chose that the audience was important so that's why that that performing part which is I'm bringing it all back in a giant circle to the question you asked me about half an hour ago about what is that the most important part would I rather do more writing I think at the moment, you know, as I said, it's the pinnacle to take everything out on stage and live.

22:12You're going to hit a bum note. Something's going to go wrong. You know, there's going to be feedback. I'm just thinking about writers. You might write the seminal work of, you know, the 21st century, but you can't see the person reading your work. So they might be absolutely loving this book, but you don't know it because you're in your house and they're in theirs, whereas you get to see your audience absolutely appreciate and love. I just love the earthiness, the randomness of the gig because you never know what you're going to get. You can think I'm playing Glasgow. It's a Friday night. This is going to go.

22:43This is going to go. And they're like a bunch of nuns sitting out there. And then you're like Birmingham on a Monday night. You know, buckle in, guys. This could be hard. You know what I mean? We've got to try and get some action. And they're like mad for it. It's like a Black Sabbath sort of gig. So you can't predict. You never quite can. You think you can, but you can't. So there's a sort of randomness to it. But also even just within the gig, the little twists and turns, the things that go wrong, the unexpected things that can unlock a performance or unlock you because it's very hard not to fall into repetitive paths of just doing and saying the same kind of things.

23:19Have you had the perfect gig, do you think, yet? Yeah, I've had loads of them. So where did you feel most? Was there a moment early in your career where you thought, this is exactly what it's supposed to be? There was a key moment when I first performed in Ireland at a pub called Whelan's, the famous venue at the back. And these two young lads from Ireland had got fixated on my first album, A Century Ends, which I was trying very hard to sort of get off the ground in the UK, in the US. And they were playing it. Like one of them was a video, sort of VJ kind of thing, on a cool Irish TV program.

23:59He drummed up some interest around my first song, Birds Without Wings and Shine, which is the follow-up, and they wanted to get me over to play. And I went over there not knowing what to expect. And I remember getting to the venue on show night, and the place absolutely rammed. And because I've lived this sort of nightmare before, I thought there's probably another gig on, and my gig's in a smaller room just through the back. But they were actually there to see me. I couldn't get over it. And then there was this poet came out, this Pat Inglesby, and he gave me this big introduction, you know. And then there was a massive roar, and then I had to walk on stage.

24:36I was like, whoa, this is amazing. It's a bigger roar than I've ever had coming off a stage, going on to a stage. So that was the beginning of 1994. And I just played until I had no guitar strings left. I used to break a lot of guitar strings and no songs left. I just gave absolutely everything I had in the tank, and I had no voice or anything. Whoa. And that was the beginning of my relationship with Ireland. It was something salt of the earth kind of. But the way that music and poetry and lyricism still lives in the culture, they have poets come to Parliament, their equivalent of Parliament, to speak.

25:10Heaney speaking at Parliament would be seen as the greatest thing you could possibly have. Can you imagine that in our country? No. So something still lives out in the Wild West. And I began to tap into that. And that fuelled my entire career, really. So that was an absolutely key moment in my life. But even just, I've been touring all through last year. I'm about to go out again in a couple of months' time. We had a show, the Royal Albert Hall, and we sold it in the round. So you can sell the choir stores behind. And I don't know what happened that night, but it just, we had, we decided to blow some money on having some live horn players with us.

25:51We had a seven-piece horn section. It was just like magic. And you came off thinking... It makes me emotional to think about it. It was extraordinary. We just didn't put a foot wrong. Well, even if someone hit a bum note, it wouldn't matter. They were just on side from moment one. And some gigs kind of go like this. They kind of rise and rise, and then they kind of plateau. It just kept going from song to song to song to song through the set list until the end. the whole place was on its feet and it was were all your important people there um no they weren't because it was a it was a very difficult week for my family we we lost a family member that just in fact two days before the show so my wife didn't come and um my daughters came to kind of support me it was actually an awful week um but I had all these enormous shows to do in Dublin and London so but strangely and conversely I had to snap myself out of that and and do the gig and that's what you have to do so it was perhaps maybe that was a part of it too maybe the fact I had to be more vulnerable even than I knew uh on stage people do pick up on things so but anyway that was a that was an incredible evening and they continue to occur and I feel an accumulation of the love that I've given to my songwriting and my performing over the year coming back at me it's not that it stands still I know I feel it's it's it's ever it's richer as I go as the whole thing becomes more finite perhaps I think there's a point with success where it's very hard to value what you're being given you're playing bigger and bigger shows there's more and more people coming they're all sold out your records in the charts everyone loves you you know there's a bouquet of flowers coming through from the record company because this or that happened or whatever you you know, the bottle of champagne waiting for you here, it's very hard to keep feeling how special it is.

27:48Whereas these days, having been on a bit more of a journey, as people like to say, trying to avoid such terms, but I just used it, having come through 30 odd years of playing music, it feels much more special. How long will I be able to sing and commit the kind of energy and time that you need to really put a tour together to really do something? Do you have an idea about that? I'll sing like Sinatra. I'll sing until I can sing no more. I'll never stop. I'll never stop. But I think in terms of how much touring, you know, I look at people like Van Morrison and Tom Jones. I don't know how they keep going at the rate that they keep going.

28:29It's a phenomenal commitment. But like them, I'm in it for life. It's this nectar that I'm describing. I will always be the hummingbird visiting the flower. I think also with what's happening with AI and I don't know really truly how much is happening with AI in the creative world because everything I read kind of tells me that they're not necessarily doing a great job replicating what humans can do. So maybe we don't need to be worried at all. But it's so heartening to hear that there is a thriving community and people want to see live music. They want to feel alive, don't they, in that environment?

29:08Well, I think because, I mean, just to touch upon AI, AI is a huge threat to the creative industry. It's a threat to everything. And as I like to say to my Y4 children, when they're using it, you know, they say that every time you search something, it uses like a pint of water and however much electricity. It's not free. They're giving it like the first Ocado deliveries. It's free for a while. And then it won't be free, I guarantee. So it's definitely in the studio at the moment when I'm writing, you can work with a click track and it keeps you in time. Some tracks, Babylon, Please Forgive Me, Sail Away, they don't suffer any ill effects by being gridded in this kind of way.

29:56But these days when I'm recording at the moment, I think partly because of the spectre of AI, I want to record a kind of music in such a human way that it is not replicable. It's impossible, including bad notes, you know, anything that they just couldn't generate. So that humanness that you hear in Nina Simone or, you know, Bob Dylan or Van Morrison, you know, Aretha Franklin, real people playing in real time, that's vital. I think another thing that's changed is that, you know, if you think back to the 80s and 90s, branding was how you sort of showed your wealth, your importance. But now we've entered an area where, because everything's available and overexposed, the sort of fully commercially saturated reality that we've been living in for so long, stewing in, it's experience now that you hold over other people.

30:52So actually that gig ticket or that sporting event when you were there on the halfway line, look at my seats, that's all it's about. So those moments have become more important, I think, partly because of technology and what it's done to everything. It disturbs me greatly how new technology is just allowed to ride roughshod over everything because it's supposedly a good thing. Will it bring us closer to nature? Will it make a more sustainable earth? I very much doubt it. And yet, you know, that's what we actually need. I know that there have been calls, obviously, for legislation to try and help musicians and artists to protect their works, which so far, I think, has achieved what it...

31:34I think behind all I would imagine is that within the mechanics of the music industry, AI will be an incredible tool to create things without the worry of artists having to do it for you. so I imagine they're just sharpening their legal kit ready for the challenge that will come I think my music's probably been studied eaten and spat out by the machine already without me even knowing about it I would imagine so anyway I mean but you know back in the day when I was successful there were a couple of adverts that went you know UK adverts that used sort of the template of my songs as a basis and just changed it enough that you can you couldn't see them exactly yeah and that That's always been a kind of time-honored thing.

32:20Anyway, AI doesn't have a soul, and what we need is more soul, not less. So Mars doesn't have much of an atmosphere. I'm not personally that excited about humans getting to live there. There's no birdsong. There are no rivers, at least not anymore. So these are the kind of priorities, as far as I can tell, on a sort of global scale. But you could be fooled into thinking otherwise when looking at the sort of general picture. And what I can't believe is the lobbying that goes on free. It's part of every conversation now. Why? Because it's being pushed forward as if, hey, all the great uses of it.

32:55It's how quickly it has grown to that scale as well. Massive. It felt like it was something that I could put off thinking about for a long time. No way. And then it came so quickly, almost in months, it's become such a huge part of people's lives. So I think it makes the act of singing more important. in its fullest sense, not just what I do, but the song of life, if you like. You know, that human thing that we do when we dig a bit deeper in conversation and we sort of resonate with what matters, that becomes really important. And I think the gig becomes important too. So these sort of things that are happening in real time in a kind of messy way.

33:35A very strange kind of gear change here, but you said something before we started recording about songs at halftime in rugby matches. and when you said they're the song of life I immediately thought of a closed roof at the Principality Stadium and the crowd singing the anthem which I used to have to sing every morning the most beautiful thing it's an incredible anthem when 70 ,000 people are singing it is just you can't help but feel we're going to be okay it's alright we're still breathing and beating and we're going to find a way through all this and called me old fashioned which I definitely am but shouldn't that be the one spine-tingling noise that you hear, apart from the cheers and the jeers that you get at a live event, that singing of that anthem should be the loudest thing that anyone hears, not the music in the PA system.

34:27It's the same at football matches. It's constant, as if we could, like we're living in a lift, a giant lift with like sound being pumped in all the time. We're not going to have fun unless they turn the music off. We can't talk to each other. really upsets me. You guys trying to have an intelligent conversation while sort of Ibiza's happening in the background and flashing lights sort of, you know, I feel it's disrespectful to not just you working. I think it's a lack of faith by those people that run those venues that actually if you hear that crowd singing the anthem at the beginning, do you not now realise that they can do something special without you imparting your idea of fun onto them?

35:05Lead them in another song. the singing at sports is absolutely incredible a crowd when they really get going You'll never walk alone, sang at Anfield Amazing, well I don't like to think about that, I'm from Manchester but I'll pretend you didn't say that Blading Races at St James' Park

35:28Wherever you go there is a song and a football ground or a rugby ground We best not touch on some of those It's synonymous with those venues But so what I was leading to was your disdain for it, but you've articulated that well, that we should just be kind of our own cheerleaders in that environment. We don't need to have that PA. Have faith in the spectacle of the whole thing. It's a rich thing. It's an incredible moment. I think everybody, you know, respects... I was brought up having to play rugby when I moved to Wales. I was too small and sort of puny to be any good at it. And I didn't understand the rules.

36:03But one thing I've always been able to see is just the different culture that surrounds it and the lovely relationship between fans and the way that the VAR is handled. You know, for example, like on open mic in front of the crowd, this is what I'm seeing. What do you think? Yes. And then it might not be popular if you're in the Stade de France and you give the decision the other way. But it's wonderfully open and this clash of countries, so passionate. it doesn't need all the sort of contemporary embellishment. It really is a wonderful thing in and of itself. And those anthems being sung in the way that they are, when else do you get to hear that?

36:45You don't. You don't hear it like that at the football match. No. You know, or at Wimbledon. It's a unique thing. Yeah. So I just feel that they're tampering with something, trying to make it more exciting. It shouldn't. It should just stand alone. And the other thing I want to go back to, you said I think about 25 minutes ago was about, having some therapy at that point in your life or then starting those conversations because two things one you said something which I think is really important that I want to stress because you said you might not meet the right person at the beginning and I often think when people start on a therapy journey that is so important that you might not get the right person for you at the very beginning and people say that time and time again and always persevere there'll be somebody else that's you know or a style of therapy that's good for you because I'm sure a lot of people listening to this might have started and stopped or be thinking about it but the other thing is I wondered what your um your wife obviously has been the person who's been at home quite a lot while you've been away touring not always with small children I'm sure it's not easy to come away was she very encouraging of you going on a journey for you because of how it might impact the relationship well she has retrained as a therapist now so that's what living with me does to you she does CBT so more sort of targeted um and absolutely loves it and she's brilliant at it But she definitely would have been encouraging.

38:06It's difficult to be the second most important thing in somebody's life, not just apparently to that person, but to all the people that surround them. So the wife is sort of dismissed as a sort of piece of furniture. You look after the kids. He needs to do that. So it's not a comfortable relationship to be part of the whole thing. And we went through it for a long time. and she brought up my children while I was away a lot of the time. I mean, COVID was like the elephant in the room became huge. How much I loved my children and how special they were because we were all there in the house together.

38:42It became like, oh, my God, I'm crazy about these people. They're amazing. I mean, it wasn't that I didn't love them before, but I think that was a real moment for me. It's not just that I was at home. I wasn't going anywhere for the next however long. It was like, right, okay. So I think she would have been encouraging. It's very difficult going into therapy. I mean, people are very proud and it's scary opening Pandora's box, you know, letting things out. Because the very first question that elisted the answer was about you as a baby and how you've connected some of the reasons for your being almost, going back to those very early experiences.

39:21Well, I think it's tempting to do so. It's just... Well, you had an extraordinary early life experience, didn't you? Yeah, and I think it's definitely, I'm still wailing, if you like. I'm still, as I say, trying to make a world within a world. So the world doesn't feel very safe to me. And I've always had a very...

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40:21untrusting relationship with let's just say the critical media and particularly I think everybody is criticism of you personally when you go out and you're you have a public persona it's very hard to take but I've always I've never liked it even when I was young I didn't read all those music magazines i didn't like the sort of takedowns i you know that making people feel small giving you stars um but i don't i don't like that i don't like music as a competitive sport uh it's not that i'm averse to slagging people off occasionally myself of course i am i'm only human but i i've always been so i i don't know i'm sort of hypersensitive so when i'm making things i'm in my own world making and of course if you're making well you're making something that's it has components sediment almost of your emotional life and ghost spectres even maybe that you don't understand from your past and your parents past that start to formulate into images pictures music and it's something mysterious about it but you're making something that's kind of like a controlled exorcism almost of what you are again and again and again and while you're in that bubble it's it's it's it's very intense very rewarding but it's also safe it's not it's it's just there and then of course it has to be given to the world and that's a scary moment every time it has to go out and be criticized and be held up and judged and uh and then you have to go out and play the show the songs for people and do they care about them or not or do they just want to hear the oldies you know that's one of the things about the tour i've just done that's been such of such huge uh giving me such huge pleasure is the fact that i managed to i had a record i felt that could withstand going shoulder to shoulder these new songs with the old songs so rather than do the so few new songs at the beginning and then do all the olds i kind of put them in but we've had a fantastic reaction and to see the new songs go down does the audience look different are they Older.

42:29So are they the originals then? Or are some... They're the new originals. I'm using Spinal Tap, you see. Interlopis. There's too many Spinal Tap, the new originals.

42:42There's one thing about this tour, I've seen a lot more young people coming through. So there's the kids whose parents were into White Ladder and that era of my music, who've been brought up listening to it and are now sort of into it themselves in the weird sort of generational sort of munching that seems to have gone on. Well, the 2000s is now vintage, isn't it? Folded in on itself. Culture's kind of, it's like, if you think about how music used to be, 50s into the 60s into the 70s and then punk, 80s, everything was pushing the past back, using elements, making something new. But that kind of ended some time ago.

43:17There are innovators, but basically everything's up for grabs. You can kind of listen to music from any era now, from whatever. so people share music families share music so you see that you see big family gatherings where grandparents, parents grandkids, even great grandkids, you see like four generations sometimes so that's how it's sort of changing Yeah and it's good for you If there's no new audience the gigs are going to get smaller that's a fact You're still there though the midlifers are still there So you've looked after your mental health through that journey. What about your physical well-being as you're in midlife?

43:59Because you've got to have a lot of energy to get on stage and do that. Do you actually do anything specific? Are you sting-like in your yoghurt practice? Are you like Mick Jagger running around Richmond Park? A terrifying image of me in my underpants with a six-pack, me and Trudy on our Tuscan terrace with the olives wafting gently in the breeze. No, my life is nothing like that, thankfully. No, it's... Pilates? I do Pilates because I've had a lot of back problems and issues like that and annoying injuries. I haven't had any really massive problems, but I've had... So are you mat, reformer, tower?

44:39Yeah, yeah, reformer. The whole thing, yeah. So, and I try and do my stretches and things, some of them every morning, and then I do a sort of couple of sessions a week. So, and that does, it is seeming to help. So I used to sort of do football in the park with a kind of fitness element to it. It makes me very sad that my football career ended when I was basically probably about 20, really, 20, 21. When I was young, I played all sports all the time. I was just playing sport all the time. Tennis, cricket, football, I'm made to play rugby. I wasn't so keen on that. But just anything, ping pong, you know, snooker, pool.

45:20I was in the pool team, this team, the pub cricket team. But you were a busy kid. I was constantly doing stuff. With the arts side of you as well. Totally, yeah. Yeah. I was all go. And then, you know, as I started to go off for college, I would play for Solver AFC when I came back at weekends and stuff. It was when the new coach started to put me on the subs bench. I said, I'd rather play in the seconds. I'd rather play in the seconds than play on subs bench in the first. but that that so i guess i anyway i was active uh and i've i don't like running i'm not a very good swimmer i go swimming from like april till october outdoors obviously yeah so when i'm up in norfolk at my house up there i'll go in the sea come rain or shine if it's unless it's really windy or something stormy i'll probably go for a swim on the high tide so a bit of cold water Cold water swim, that's very good for mental and physical well-being, I feel.

46:15But it's not like a fitness thing. It's just a reboot. I think a molecular reboot of your entire system. So, you know, so that's something I do. As I say, a bit of Pilates. And the football training became problematic because I just kept getting little injuries. And my back went a couple of times and I thought, who am I trying to fool out? I need a different approach. and my trainer was a bit upset. I said, look, I've got another injury. I think I'm going to pack this in and try something different. But it was probably a good move. So I think, as I say, sitting in these kind of darkened rooms like studios and dressing rooms and being hunched over a piano, over my guitar, it's very hard to have good posture when you're working like that because really I'm just in my own world and I'm not thinking about the physical wear and tear.

47:06but I think because of my life, and obviously I wobble my head for a living as well, as is well known, I think that's starting to have an effect. I might just be stuck on one side for the last part of my career. Hello! Choose a side, Dave, it's not coming back. So I think there's been, I've had some massive neck problems. I played in a dad's football game. It was the last game of football I ever played, about the age of 39. and it was great fun. We had a few back and forth matches with this Irish dad's team and this huge centre half playing for them was rushing in and his eyes were lighting up.

47:46He thought he was about to slam the ball into the roof of the net but with my nippy little toes, I took the ball away, like the right back that I am, and he absolutely flattened me and I didn't have a chance to put my arms back and I landed on my head and didn't really realize the damage that had been done until we got to the showers and I stopped being able to move properly, not for the first time after a game of football. And I was sort of frozen. I was having real problems getting out of the shower, putting my clothes on. And then I went to the hospital and they said, yes, you've ruptured this part of your neck, these connective bits here.

48:23So I had a very intense period. I had to stop migraines for a couple of months and I had to do all this physio to kind of come back. And I think I damaged, maybe my neck was damaged at the time. Did the dad know what you'd done? Well, we didn't really know at the time. I think he is aware of it because it came to light that I couldn't work for a couple of months. It turns out it was Tony Adams, isn't it? I have played with Tony. What a moment that was. You didn't do soccer, did you? I did, the very first one. You did. Oh, my gosh. I suddenly thought, yes, yes. What year was that? What year was the very first year?

49:00I realised my entire career. I played at Old Trafford. I think I presented that for my TV. I played at Old Trafford with Maradona. Robbie Williams was the... Robbie Williams. When I got that call, I played right back for 90 minutes. I gave away a penalty. I played the full match up against Rude Hullet, Gianfranco Zola. I tackled Gordon Ramsay. He had to go off. He was injured. On came David Ginola. First tackle, he was injured. he had to go off and that was a clean tackle i admit i fouled ramsey just outside the box so you know uh there's no need to send the fan mail in we don't do that anymore just go on my instagram and give me a thumbs up uh and yeah then then i was up against zola and hullet and maradona it was a trio of players that's slightly better than i was uh so i mean that's did you get to chat to maradona did you have that was a there was a very funny moment after the end of the game which which is the sort of gorillas in the mist, I call this memory.

49:55I was in the dressing room and I was so sort of elated and everything. And I said, where is everyone? They said, well, they're all getting their shirt signed next door. I said, right. I was like, towel down. I was like, better get in there. So I was like, okay, Schmeichel, you know, blah, blah. I went around and I said, where's Gianfranco and Maradona? And they just pointed because they'd had to sign for so long. They'd only just got into the showers. And I was like, fuck it, I'm going. Oh, sorry. Mute. damn it, I'm going into the showers. So there was just mist. And I sort of entered in and they were like there in the sort of showers coming down.

50:29You wouldn't mind signing me shirt, would you? And they sort of sighed. And then I got, but I've got the signatures. I completed the full set. So they were stark, bollock naked in the showers and you're handing them a Sharpie pen. Totally, but it was that kind of moment. What are you going to do? Saunter out of the dressing room. That was the glittering prize. Did you get those shirts signed? I did, yeah, and I've got it framed. So that part of my life, the sporting part, I let slide because I was a musician. I basically focused on something else. And I'm slightly regretful of that, I suppose, because there's something...

51:06To be in your body in that way is a very fulfilling, balancing thing. It's a wonderful thing. I'm a highly competitive person. my wife and I are both very competitive there's a game of swing ball that a friend of ours videoed where we'd had about three bottles of rosé and no one had ever seen anything like it it went on for about 15 minutes with many accusations of cheating

51:36it was unbelievable there should have been a national anthem either before it or after it or some kind of anthem anyway so that competitive spirit I was going to ask you about motivation actually and how you keep motivated in terms of getting up on stage and doing the things that you do but is that competitive spirit do you think the thing that drives you forward I guess it's part of it I think it just feels more important more and more important to do something that isn't the horror show that we see as the world and it's politics and ultraviolence playing out all around us so de-realising, reality has become so destabilised.

52:15I think just to do something that stands on its own and is a good thing that people from all types, ages, whatever, nationalities, everyone can participate in, that sort of thing becomes more important, I suppose. To take away something else from your kind of midlife learnings, let's say, obviously you've worked on your mind, you've worked on your body to an extent with your Pilates. Have you changed anything about what you put inside your body? I try and sort of modify my eating. It's not enough to do exercise. Are you a faster? No, but I try and sort of cut the carbs down or eliminate them for periods.

52:55And that is effective, but it's also incredibly boring. Well, a lot of artists also complain about the post-show kind of calories. It's not just what you eat. And obviously you come off stage and your energy cycle, your cycle is so completely different. It's like you're feeling good at sort of 11.30 at night. So then you're starving hungry as well. Like the adrenaline starts to wear off. So all these sort of negative things in terms of looking after yourself. But I think it's much more than that. I've come to realise, and this is my excuse anyway, and I'm sticking to it, is that there's a kind of, every gig is a kind of slightly harrowing experience when you sort of look at it in the cold light of day, kind of putting yourself out there.

53:34So there's a sort of fight or flight response that's readied. and I think that when you're constantly out as sort of creaturely part of yourself the animal part when you're out of your comfort zone smells the familiar things your home environment you're constantly being out of context the whole time dressing room hotel tour bus da da da I just think that you're the way that you crave food and and and stuff it's you never know where your next meal is coming from that's what the animal part is sort of telling you that's what I think this is what's happening. Eat it now while it's there. You metabolise differently when you're in this out of context, floating in this world, adrenalised world, where you're constantly heading towards the next show.

54:20Even on a day off, I'll be thinking, well, tomorrow night I'm doing that. When was the set going to be? You're kind of always in a state of readiness. And even now with the shows I've got coming up, they're a couple of months away. I can feel it already. I kind of, I'm grinding into... where can people hear you where can they see you in the all over the uk so uh we're playing each of uk and ireland tour last year went so well the past and present tour that we've size venues are you doing big big uh outdoor venues and then we're sort of those are weekend shows so we're kind of plugging gaps playing some smaller theaters around the country as we pass between different places so like scarborough and i think is it called Peacemakers Hall in Halifax a famous place, so places like that so 5, 6, 7 8 ,000 capacity Dreamland in Margay Cardiff Castle, so I'm going back to Wales, so Solvents and David's Collective will be there, I'll be giving them the shout from the stage as I always do, so those kind of venues, so big gigs and some festivals, we're doing Latitude and the Isle of Wight so yeah, it's going to be sizable shows Is there any kind of pre-tour ritual?

55:32Pre-tour? Like before you're going away? I think the only thing that matters is, and I'll say this on a sort of well, the thing that obsesses me is the health of my voice. And the voice is basically a beam of energy. It's a muscle that creates it. And the fitness of that muscle and its endurance capacity, that's what's key. and that's the most fragile part of the whole thing. So what do you do to protect it? I just have to make sure I prep. So it will start with, I'll start by half an hour, an hour a day singing nonstop. Then they'll build that up, maybe do that twice a day and then I'll get into rehearsals so that when I get to rehearsals, I'm not leathering my voice.

56:18You just, when you're singing with a band, it's obviously much more, you give much more to it and then obviously you add the audience more again. so you just got to make sure that it's very tiring too so that as you lose energy you've got the energy for that bit of singing so you've got to look after yourself so in the early years I would have we'd have been having a bit of a wild time of it and I'm sure the odd gig suffered as a consequence that's no longer acceptable to me you know so if you cut out alcohol no I don't cut it out but uh i don't yeah of course i drink vastly uh reduced quantities compared to what i used to drink in my 20s and 30s i was a bit of a drunkard i suppose as a kid like i think that's the thing about growing up in a rural community uh you kind of get i got served a pint in my school uniform during my o levels uh so that was the reality of my growing up um so did you manage to do that easily what reduce yeah because i don't think i've got that addictive right so you knew that i'm very lucky in that quid pro quo was your voice was going to be better for you just got to look after yourself i used to smoke uh just gave that up probably in my early 30s again all this stuff you think well this isn't really a good idea and it's but it's but that's it's the singing piece that i was always after if that is suffering if the gig suffers then what was the point of all this all the recording the songs and all that's led to this and then this i failed i've let everybody down out there it wasn't as good as it should be and if it's not as good as it should be I hate it so they've got a lot of notes to hit it's not like my songs just go da da da da da they kind of go right up and they move around and there's a lot of volume needed so I've got to preserve that that's the part that really needs careful management and the thing that obsesses me day in day out on a tour and it means that there have been times in the past where for example we've been touring all year and then we've broken for a month I didn't do any prep in the month off and then we've come back and had some massive shows and there was one very famously, two shows come to mind, one was in an amphitheatre called Red Rocks in Denver, Colorado, which is a mile high it's very, very dry and arid and I lost my voice I had all this promo all day I was doing radio performances and interviews all day and I got to think and I actually lost my voice, completely lost my voice I was like

58:36I was like, how do you get out of this? it was the stuff of nightmares bears and um how did you get out of it well the weird thing was that i i shared it with the audience i was like you know what they were like rory come on dave come on yeah okay come on mountain energy man get some mountain energy and uh and then i sort of a little bit came back and i kind of managed to get through the rest of the gig and they were cheering me on so that was amazing but even worse than that was in i was a gig where i couldn't get my voice back and that was in we were headlining a festival in Belgium in Bruges and it's basically the same scenario I hadn't sort of prepped and we'd had a massive party before I left for Belgium a big family thing and I got absolutely hammered and then went over to Belgium we went out and then to the gig and I just I just gave it so much in the first sort of 45 it just started to go oh my god my voice is going and the moment you've thought that you're over so I just I completely lost and I could there was nothing I could do and I was there in front of all these people.

59:39So that is... They were quite chastening experiences. That nightmare scenario. So and I realised I was completely to blame as well and so yeah that maintenance, that looking after, even though... So you don't go quiet for a few hours or anything beforehand? Well yeah I do. I mean I've got my own dressing room so as you might expect and I'm really not very sociable during the, some days I might chat a bit, particularly at the beginning of the tour. The beginnings of tours are great because no one knows what's happening and everyone's terrified. And those are the ideal ground conditions for something good happening when nobody thinks they can control what the outcome is and they will have to venture heart first, not head first.

1:00:26That's in life. In fact, that's true. So those moments are very special. So there's a lot of, you know chat and and comforting banter that needs to go on but as the tour goes along everyone learns their lines they become more confident in what they're doing they become more opinionated and kind of more in control and then they think there's a good gig and a bad gig and there's a kind of qualitative assertion that their brain starts telling them about i didn't enjoy this tonight so much but anyway but then i i during this i generally take myself off and it's just quiet i'll write the set list it's always different every night so i write the set list each night and yeah just quiet I don't really read or anything I just find I get too tired on a tour of course listen to the bid point podcast as well don't you it's always on so I just I generally in fact I don't listen to much music I don't listen to music well not a great not not in these scenarios before a gig I might listen a bit but it that would be unusual it'd be mainly I'd Just be focusing and pacing, a lot of pacing.

1:01:29Can I finish with a question which you might kind of say, well, I've said lots of positive things, and you have said lots of positive things, but when I was thinking back to the kind of rise of White Ladder and how life felt so different in the early 2000s and we've had such speed of technological change and so much going on in the world currently, it's easy to think that everything's worse than it ever was, you know, and we have had some gloomy kind of ventures in this conversation down avenues of you know AI and things like that what is better in the world now for you than it was at the start of the of the launch really of your huge career do you think both professionally or something that you feel actually life is better in this way well personally you know what's better is that I value the things that are important to me more than I did when I was younger.

1:02:24Through painful lessons, I've learned what matters to me. So in terms of the pleasure I get from my children and my work and my relationships, I've never been like a depressive person. It's not that I haven't had some down moments, some difficult moments, but I've always felt this kind of... Is there a wisdom there? Well, no, just a molecular charge. I feel the world just gives me energy, the natural world. These things restore me. So those things I've come to, my attenuation has improved in terms of seeing what's important and deepening my relationship with the things that matter to me and being less distracted by others.

1:03:12That's on a personal level. That's a great thing. On a global scale, it's harder to find positive things. I think there are many positive things. I think the way that, within my lifetime, women have been fighting a constant battle to be, you know, taken more seriously, allowed into the workplace, better paid, better respected. It's an ongoing battle. I'm not saying it's over, but those sort of changes have happened through my lifetime and they've been very different. there's a beginnings of a dawning consciousness regarding the environment and climate. I don't think people quite know what to do with the sort of abstract mathematics of carbon use and everything else.

1:03:59But so those things I'm seeing beginning to emerge, we're starting to appreciate that nature loss and the sort of degrading of our environment and the world as a whole, it can't go on much longer. We need to do something about it. I think people are looking around for someone to show them what that is. But I see the beginnings of a change, perhaps, there. So I'm clinging to those slender hopes that they're going to blossom into something more profound. And I'll certainly be right there trying to make them bloom into something more. But the world is in a kind of gloomy state because we're still in a very, very much in a state of denial.

1:04:38And it's about, you know, the way that politics has become so reactionary again. Just always looking for someone you can look down on and that consolidates a sense of identity in a very negative way. We're this, not that. So those populist ideas, or populism, it doesn't even cover it. But yeah, it's hard to cast around given the sort of environmental picture and the political picture and look for resounding positive. But people feel more strongly able to empower themselves, at least theoretically, than they ever did before. well I'm glad that you're still providing such joy to so many people and you will continue to do that this summer on your tours and uh with all your new music so um thank you so much David it's been absolutely fascinating and um I'm glad you had two cups of coffee before you came in I certainly did I knew it was going to be fast I knew the word per minute count was going to be high I might have beaten my record there thank you so much thank you