The Art of Being Billy
So first things first Billy, how the blooming hell are you?
’’I feel very lucky. There have been Covid issues with family members, but I’m really grateful to be working from home. I do think this is the future, I think it would have happened anyway – but the pandemic has accelerated it of course.”
So, let’s get on to music! I would love to talk to you about The Helicopter of the Holy Ghost debut album, ‘Afters’ if I may? When you were approaching the project, did you already have a dream list of people you wanted to get involved or did the idea of contributors evolve along with the record?
‘’It was born once I started fiddling around with Richard Archer of Hard-Fi. I had breakfast with him around 2017 and he explained, ‘you know you can take vocals off those demo tracks and use what’s left, I have the technology’. At this time the material that my brother found on the mini-discs that were rescued from my car-crash was, in total, only about 18 minutes long, so using Audacity (the cheap editing software) I started to play around with ideas at home. Clearly there wasn’t enough for an album so that’s when I asked Chris, AKA Crayola Lectern, ‘can you notate them on a piano?’ He said ‘well I can do better than that, I can record them in the shed!’ So once we had done that there was almost an albums-worth. The bands I know at the record label, Kscope are a bunch of musicians who are, in the best possible sense of the word, music nerds – so they were a big help too.
At this point I was still singing the tracks so once my Kscope musos put some colour into it, there was about 25 minutes. I still didn’t know what it was going to be at this point – I thought there’s probably enough there now for me to approach a singer, and there was really only one person that I could approach to sing it, and that was Mark (Mark Morriss).’’
I know Adam (Devlin of The Bluetones) better because we both support the same football club – the mighty Brentford: Mark I’ve known for a long time but not as well. The Bluetones used to share the same rehearsal space as my band theaudience but they were number one in the charts and we hadn’t released a record at that time. I have found out since through various interviews is that Mark and Scott (Morriss) used to come and see my student band The Grooveyard, they must’ve been about 15 then!
Mark is the most famous person I know, he is such a special singer, so those two things combined; perfect. I could have asked someone famous to sing it, or I could have asked someone who is a good singer to sing it, but Mark is the only person I know who’s both of those things so it had to be him! It’s been really interesting to see how his fans have taken to it, as I don’t think the LP would have existed without the fans of Mark and The Bluetones.
We recorded the vocals just after lockdown, we all took lateral flow tests, which was a thing by then; and we were all in a different rooms, Mark in the live room, Richard was in the control room and I was outside! So Mark did just three takes of each song – the long drive to the studio meant he had already learned the songs by his arrival. At this point I thought this is a project that can go somewhere, but we still didn’t have enough songs so I said to Chris can we do some of yours and that’s where ‘Slow Down’ came from – and that’s your opener. It was so obviously the opening track and the first single.
A lot has been about me – the Guardian took hold of the story (referring to the near-fatal car accident caused by joy riders which Billy survived in 2001) but it’s important to say that I think Crayola Lectern is one of the best song-writers in Britain. He has this niche appeal of being very well thought among Cardiacs fans and the Brighton Psychedelic set; so I had four things that blended – Richard being able to twiddle the knobs and amend things, Mark’s charisma and professionalism, Chris being the musician within the band, and my bullshitting skills.”
Why did you feel you needed someone else to sing when you had recorded the demo as the singer yourself?
‘’I don’t think anybody would have cared if I had sung – I am a great singer but the trouble with my singing is that people listen to it wrong! I sound like Caruso (Enrico Caruso the Italian operatic tenor) but people put their fingers in their ears – I’ve no idea why! (Laughs). No seriously, it needed a singer – it’s like if I had played guitar or trumpet on it, it would have been shit…”
Well you say that, but when I interviewed Mark, he was singing your praises and didn’t understand why you hadn’t sung it yourself…
‘’Well he’s right, I am a great singer! But I think it needed an actual singer, someone who would bring a personality to it. I also think that the 60s influences on the album work really well with Mark as The Bluetones were influenced by the 60s – a traditional British rock group but a cut above their peers – they are the melodeons of the Britpop era. Very much a tuneful group with lovely jangly guitars, they very much reminded me of my favourite indie bands of the 1980s like Felt. A four- piece indie band is one of the great British institutions.’’
In terms of touring the album, have you thought seriously about that?
‘Mark is keen to do this live. I learned quite a lot about how The Bluetones work –he is the dynamic member of that band. Mark is also the ticket seller – if THOTG did a couple of live shows then it would be Mark people that would be paying to see us. So it’s possible there will be some shows at some point soon. It would be pianos, keyboards and vocals so it would be quite different – very minimal and gentle.’
Are you possessive about the project or are you happy to hand over elements of it to the other band members?
‘’There’s a thin line, a balancing act; running a band and being the main songwriter but also making sure people feel as though they are involved. I would love to be a benign dictator – like a Kevin Roland of Dexys – that’s my fantasy – everyone has to do exactly as I say – go jogging at 6 o’clock in the morning (laughs).
Lauren Jayne
