There aren’t many men who can put on weight and, in the process, grow into
their looks. Elbow’s Guy Garvey appears to be one of them. Beyond the four
walls of Manchester’s former Deaf Institute, now a gastro-bar that answers
to the same name, there are bears who suit the term “ursine” less than he
does.
By contrast, remind yourself how he looked when Elbow announced themselves to
the world in 2001 with Asleep in the Back and it’s startling to see
the pronounced cheekbones of a boy in his twenties atop a physique that
erred closer to Peter Crouch than Peter Ustinov. In 2008, though – the year
that The Seldom Seen Kid attained Mercury prize-winning glory – it’s
the latter that more readily springs to mind.
At the end of a thoroughly entertaining afternoon, Garvey mentions that he was
recently approached by someone at the BBC who wanted to know if he was
interested in doing more television. Punditry, panel shows – that sort of
thing. Garvey politely declined. Between Elbow and his BBC 6 Music radio
show Guy Garvey’s Finest Hour (Sundays at 10pm), there was
enough to be getting on with.
Nonetheless, you could see where our TV man was coming from. In the
cripplingly self-conscious subspecies that is the indie rock frontman, the
34-year-old Garvey comes with his own portable fireside glow. If he’s
comfortable with attention, that probably has something to do with the fact
that he received plenty of it, growing up in working-class Bury with five
older sisters. Far from forgetting that there’s a machine recording his
utterances, he’ll occasionally lean in and address it directly when dealing
with a matter close to his heart.
One such matter – a thorny issue for any vegetarian – is that of Christmas
dinner. “If you’re cooking for a vegetarian this Christmas,” he begins,
“abandon the idea of nut roast. They’ll eat it, but they won’t enjoy it as
much as if you get them a nice cheese and onion pie.”
Nut roast or no nut roast, whatever happens to Garvey this December 25 will
almost certainly be better than the limbo in which he found himself 12
months ago. Elbow had just applied the finishing touches to The Seldom
Seen Kid, an 11-song rapture that showed its narrator speeding from
heartbreak to infatuation, unsure of where the brakes were. Garvey was in
love, a new record deal in place.
But the album was still four months away from release – and things could well
go wrong. After the proggy, shape-shifting lullabies that populated Asleep
in the Back, a Mercury nomination and the ensuing awards ceremony had
taught Garvey an important lesson. “They were about to announce the winner
and the cameras swung around to us. So, for a second, you dared imagine it
could be you – but, of course, it went to PJ Harvey.”
In 2005, for their third album, Leaders of the Free World, they came
back stronger, although the toll exacted upon the singer’s personal life was
all over the songs. With Garvey writing in the wake of his split from the
Radio 1 DJ Edith Bowman,The StopsandMy Very Bestdepicted two
forlorn souls all but indistinguishable among the ruins of what must once
have been a relationship. Elbow’s only mistake, it seems, was to hand over
such a beautiful memoir of desolation to a record company that didn’t have
the means to promote it. With insolvency just around the corner, V2 barely
put the record out.
Sounding more shop steward than pop star – a trait possibly inherited from his
trade unionist father – Garvey recalls: “We downed tools and demanded that
they let us go. Once we made that decision, we had to get used to the idea
that whatever we had put into that record . . . we just had to let it go.”
I tell him that, after Leaders of the Free World failed to find its
audience, I couldn’t imagine them digging that deep to produce anything
comparable. With three members of the band now raising young families, there
were new financial imperatives to consider. So when V2 finally released them
from their deal, it seemed the game was up. “I felt like throwing the
f***ing towel in,” he hisses. “But we had our pride, you know? Even back
when we were s*** we were proud.”
The truth was that Elbow had been together for so long (an early version of
the band formed in 1989) that Garvey didn’t know how to stop. When the band
sought to exorcise the disappointment of Leaders of the Free World by
going back into the studio, Garvey brought with him the bones of a new song.
The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver was a beautifully observed SOS
whose protagonist, shut in his capsule, realises his ambitions have driven
away anyone who ever mattered to him. Though ostensibly inspired by a
conversation overheard in a bar, Garvey says that the song also works as a
sketch of what he once feared might happen in the wake of Elbow’s early
acclaim. “If I think back to how [ambitious] I was,” he recalls, “it was
like nothing could stand in my way.”
There is no shortage of artists who use relationships as kindling to keep the
creative fires burning. Around the time of Elbow’s second album, Cast
of Thousands (2003), Garvey feared he might be turning into one of them.
“It’s really twisted to treat people badly so that you’re in the right
position to write songs,” he says. “So you have to decide. Do you want it to
be that the songs rule your life or is it going to be the other way around?
I certainly found myself in that position, wondering which was the cart and
which the horse.”
Asked what the big breakthrough was, Garvey says it was to realise that
“songwriting is something I really enjoy doing with my friends. It isn’t who
I am”. Like any well-raised Catholic boy – the sixth of seven children –
he’s harder on himself, you suspect, than he needs to be. He has stayed
friends with all of his ex-girlfriends; Bowman reads out the text messages
he sends to her while she’s on air.
And when Garvey allowed himself to believe that his success as a songwriter
might not be contingent on the chaos of his personal life, he set about
assiduously wooing Emma Unsworth, a Mancunian writer he had dated before
meeting Bowman. Rearrange the track listing of The Seldom Seen Kid
and much of what you’re left with is a blow-by-blow progress report on his
efforts, lent a cinemascope grandeur by the band’s keyboardist Craig
Potter’s arrangements. “I’m saving the world at eight,” he coos on An
Audience with the Pope, “But if she says she needs me/ She says she
needs me/ Everybody’s going to have to wait.”
Presumably she knows the song is about her. “Yes. It was literally waiting for
her to phone,” Garvey says. That must feel brilliant, I suggest. “I don’t
know,” he deadpans. “Maybe I should ask her: ‘Do you feel brilliant when you
listen to that song?’ Actually, Emma’s in the middle of writing a novel at
the moment, and sometimes I’m tempted to say: ‘That endearing little detail
you’ve put in there – is that me?’ But you don’t, just in case it isn’t.”
There’s a poetic logic to the way things turned out. By flushing away any
remaining trace of the notion that genius equals pain, Garvey allowed
himself to fall in love. By falling in love he has navigated his band to new
peaks. Neither does it do any harm that, in the process, Garvey has gained
that extra two stone of star quality.
Surely, the pressure’s off now? At least for a while? Garvey remembers
something he read in a magazine a few months ago. “It was an interview with
Tommy Lee Jones,” he explains. “He said that winning an award had allowed
him to stop wanting to be great at what he does for a full couple of weeks.
When we won the Mercury that’s how I felt for” – pronging the last of his
Caesar salad, he pauses for effect – “ooh, a good day at least.”
Adele is the 20-year-old British soul sensation who, thanks to appearing
with Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live, became an overnight
sensation in the US. Last week her debut album,19, was nominated for
four Grammys.
The Saturday Night Live music producer had come to my show in New York
in September. At the time I wasn’t doing that much work. I was a bit naive,
I wanted the summer off with friends and had only flown over for that show.
Anyway, he loved it and we got offered an appearance on the show. At that
time Sarah Palin was-meant to be on the following week’s show, but her slot
got changed because of something to do with the election campaign.
The atmosphere on the show is amazing, but stressful. There are two
performances to an audience before it goes out live as they road-test the
sketches and drop those that don’t get laughs. Obviously with Palin and her
hundreds of Secret Service agents around the place it was even more hectic.
The Secret Service people were funny; when I first arrived they followed me
to my dressing room, checking I should be going there. Half were in suits
and half in plain clothes with all their wires. I got nervous about what I
was saying. I can be quite mouthy.
It was a totally surreal experience. She was the most famous woman in the
world at the time and she came over to say her daughter had bought my album
and loved it and I was like, “All right, all right, see you later!” What was
really funny was that she’s really small, so she only came up to my tits,
and I was wearing a huge Obama badge! I have to say that even though as a
politician she’s a nutter, as a person she was nice.
They told me that around 15 million people would watch the show and I was
like, yeah right, like that many people would stay in on a Saturday night to
watch TV, but sure enough they did. In fact it was more than 17 million
people.
After that everything exploded and the album shot up to No 11 and it’s been
crazy ever since. I’ve done every US TV show now apart from Oprah
and then last week got four Grammy nominations, which is unbelievable. The
BBC misquoted me, saying I didn’t want to win one, which wasn’t at all what
I’d said. I said the Grammys are awarded for the performance of a lifetime,
and this album is just the beginning, it’s just not a world I expected to be
included in yet. Of course I want one!
Bon Iver, aka the singer-songwriter Justin Vernon, retreated to a hut in
Wisconsin to overcome illness, depression and a broken heart. There he
recordedFor Emma, Forever Ago, one of the year’s most acclaimed
albums.
This time last year I was trying to figure out where I could afford to live. I
was broke and exhausted. It’s been a crazy trip since then. I’ve been able
to buy an old ranch house with my brother that I’m converting with a studio.
It’s three miles from where I was born. Not that I’ve had much time at home,
maybe 12 weeks in total. Before this year I’d been to Europe only once, to
Galway; this year we’ve [Vernon is joined onstage by Mike Noyce and Sean
Carey] been to more than 15 countries in Europe alone.
In the past fortnight we’ve played in France, Belgium and London, with four
dates in New York at the end. The first time we played in London it was in a
sweaty shoebox, maybe 180 people in a room that should only really have had
100. Last week we sold out the Apollo Theatre [capacity 2,300]. Wicked
is currently playing there and we got them to leave as much of the set as
they could, so there were dragons hanging from the ceiling. It was surreal.
Before this record I’d get sick of singing the same songs but I’ve never once
tired of these. They came from such a difficult place and now they’re like a
forcefield around me.
One of the best perks of success is up-grading from a van to a bus. Travelling
in a van is tough work. You’re up at 8am, driving for eight hours and then
playing, sleeping for hours and doing the same thing next day. The comfort
of living a little bit more luxuriously is it will allow us to stay on the
road and be able to play and not die out there.
My parents are really proud. They’ve been so supportive of me over the years,
never really giving up and going to plan B. It’s hard work to see your kids
not be able to rise up and do what they want to do, but now they get to
enjoy this too. My Mom has a scrapbook and my Dad gets Google alerts – he’s
been the one who keeps me up to date.
It’ll sound cheesy but the biggest lesson I’ve learnt is that there are so
many important decisions to make to ensure that you stay the person who made
the music in the first place. I want to make good career decisions but I
also never want to be separated from that, and I think I’ve figured out how
to do that.
In July, the violinist Nigel Kennedy returned to the Proms for the first
time in 21 years, playing Elgar’s epic violin concerto followed by a late
night jazz Prom.
Looking back I see 2008 more as a new beginning than a comeback. For me
personally it was a nice achievement to represent all the music that I play
in one evening, doing the Elgar and playing with the band I formed in
Krakow.
One thing that has been a big change for the better since my last Proms
appearance in 1987 is that music and musicians are much less pigeonholed.
Audiences have never had these barriers, and now artists and – possibly in
20 years – record companies are waking up to it.
As for conductors, I stand by what I said earlier in the year. I do think most
are overrated, and if you give ’em more money they’re much more likely to go
somewhere else than think: “Oh shit, I’d better finish my Beethoven
project”.
Now I’m starting to formulate my Polish festival in the Royal Festival Hall in
2010. We’ll take over the South Bank and turn it into a mini Poland for
three days: amazing musicians, Polish restaurants, Polish vodka, Polish
beer. We all know the quality of the building work but there’s also
phenomenal cultural depth in the Polish musical scene.
The street performer Duncan Meadows was posing as a Roman centurion when he
was chosen to appear, naked, in the Royal Opera’s Salome.
It all started when I was approached by the Royal Opera House chorus line
manager while performing in Covent Garden. I use body paint and stand on a
box and do my best to entertain. He said that they had an opera with a part
in it for me, the executioner. Would I be interested? They basically told me
I’d be naked and that was about it. When I got onstage I loved the
experience, from the very first day. When the director, David McVicar, was
explaining the set I was completely absorbed in it. I thought he was great –
he’s very passionate about what he does.
I never questioned the nudity – opera’s always got sexual undertones to it. I
was just asking “How do I get this right?” When you’re standing there
completely naked in front of 2,200 people holding a severed head dripping in
blood it’s not really something you want to mess up.
After Salome I was successful in another audition at the Opera, for Simon
Boccanegra. Then I went for another audition, for Carmen at
Glyndebourne and I ended up doing 18 performances there. I’ve just filmed
one of the biggest commercials I’ve ever done, but that’s just six hours’
filming. Opera’s great – I took up half my year doing three operas, and now
it’s something I can probably get quite easily.
When the news about the “busker at the Royal Opera House” broke after the
first night it was absolutely brilliant. But I’m very aware that a newspaper
is yesterday’s news. Now I’ve got some great memories and that’s what I have
to hold on to – until the next Salome revival in 2010. I’m more
than up for that.
