Why haven’t you gone on tour and performed A Grand Don’t Come for Free to celebrate its 20-year anniversary? Turangaleela2
I don’t tend to look back. I’ve only ever really done what was in front of me at the time. It’s great to sing the old stuff, but as a musician your old songs pay for you to write new ones, even if no one wants them. I know people like Liam [Gallagher] and Dizzee [Rascal] have done the anniversary thing, but I don’t really need the money and I think for your own sanity you have to at least pretend that you’re doing things that are important right now.
I read in your memoir, The Story of the Streets, that you read books by Hollywood screenwriters while you were writing A Grand Don’t Come for Free. Did they come in handy for your film debut [The Darker the Shadow, the Brighter the Light]? JJethwa
I actually went to see [the screenwriting consultant] Robert McKee, who’s Hollywood in every way – a sort of very aggressive, no-nonsense American. There’s a hell of a lot to take in, but ultimately it comes down to the basics: show, don’t tell; start with an idea and finish with the same one; have the characters act out your ideas in a very physical way.
He says a story is about how and why people change. I like that. I’m not sure it’s true, but it certainly sums up Hollywood from the 80s onwards, from Star Wars to Pretty Woman. The main character has some kind of flaw. I think you start off by finding the rules really interesting and then you find ways of surprising people by not following them. My film is about a DJ. We did a tour of Everyman cinemas with it last year. There’s a few bits that need fixing, but it’ll be out properly soon.
I consider you a singer-songwriter up there with Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan. Which singer-songwriters, past or present, inspired you? Nay-face
My favourite song ever is A Boy Named Sue, performed by Johnny Cash but written by Shel Silverstein, who was essentially a children’s poetry writer, but wrote some of the Dr Hook hits. I tend to like songs – By the Time I Get to Phoenix and so on. Every now and again, pop throws up an absolutely incredible lyric and you wish you’d written it. Song Cry on Jay-Z’s album The Blueprint has an amazing lyric.
Of all the brutalist architecture available, why did you choose the University of East Anglia ziggurats for the artwork of Computers & Blues? Benhabs
I had this amazing “creative” at the record label who told me that when you’re making an album cover, don’t look at it full size, because people won’t experience it that big. So it was easy to fit it into a small square. Places such as the Trellick Tower or the Ainsworth estate in London are in any film where the character comes from a tough housing estate, but they just remind me of the films they’ve been in. As soon as I saw the uni building, that was it.
Was the sound of your debut, Original Pirate Material, a conscious decision to distance yourself from associations or comparisons? paddybappin
The sound is something I think about a lot more than anything else – I wanted to be a producer when I was younger. I spectacularly failed and became an artist, which I wasn’t envisaging. But I’ve always wanted to be minimal to the absolute extreme, which can probably feel a bit stark to pop DJs. In terms of the lyrics, I didn’t feel as if I had anything interesting to say or had an interesting life. I thought everyone in music had a really glamorous life. So I tried to make normality feel glamorous.
I think you wrote great music about experiences everyone could understand: Friday night at the chip shop, losing a girlfriend, etc. But then you started singing about your experience of being a pop star [on his third album, The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living], which is not something everyone can identify with. Why the change? Do you regret it? Splutterer
As an artist, I think you have to be honest. So, in that sense, I don’t regret it. My life was utterly traumatic. I was 25 and suddenly everything turned upside down. It was crazy. I could have hidden all that stuff – and there are artists whose way of handling it is to ignore everything and almost put on a bit of an act, which is a bit dishonest. Ultimately, I think we’ve all only got one story to tell and once people have heard it, it’s difficult to be as exciting. All you can do is be authentic and I’ve been really lucky.
Are you really “45th generation Roman”? CharlesCustard
When you go back about a thousand years, which is only halfway back to the Romans, we’re pretty much all related to everyone. So we’re all descended from the Romans, although I think “45th generation” was a very rough calculation on my part that I spent probably 20 minutes on in 2001. Don’t judge me on my maths.
Has there ever been an opportunity to perform the original version of Dry Your Eyes with Chris Martin? Turangaleela2
It was never released because Chris just thought it didn’t need him. When you’re making music, you’re constantly trying different things. Sometimes you think something’s really good when it isn’t and other times you don’t really pay much attention to something and suddenly there’s a whole field of people singing it. The people decide and you just become this weird facilitator. I’ve hung out with Chris since; whenever we’ve been in the same area of the world, we’ve had dinner and stuff. That’s what famous people do [laughs]. It’s what they do, anyway.
Did taking drugs in your youth affect your mental health now? DorsalDin
There’s a lyric on the new album about mental health: “The story that I tell myself is everything, but it cannot be a lie because I’ll know.” We have this idea that you can tell yourself nice things and you’ll be better, but I think that if you’ve got a shit life you can turn it into one that means something to you. You can make yourself comfortable by turning the heating up or watching a nice movie, but I tell my children that the only true happiness is on the other side of doing difficult things. For me, learning to make a film all by myself felt crazy, almost impossible, but doing it made me stronger and confident. That’s my mental health journey.
Can you tell us about the inspiration behind Fabric Presents the Streets, your first official mix album? birokiheck
I’ve been doing a lot of DJing in the last 10 years, but I wasn’t considering doing a mix until Fabric asked me, which was a huge honour. I did a mix of all the sort of music that I play and within that I wrote some new songs that take place around a club environment. No Better Than Chance came out a couple of weeks ago and End of the Queue dropped last week. It’s basically about going home at the end of the night.
Which Streets album are you most proud of and why? John198820
Original Pirate Material, because it took courage and nobody expected it to happen. I’ve had a similar feeling making the film – feeling really embarrassed all the time because everyone thinks you’re mad for stepping out of the normal. At the time, some people thought that first album was a joke, but it’s been a great friend to me. I’m not always good at making music, but I’ve always been good at being a bit weird.
How did you feel when Charli xcx shouted you out on Club Classics with the line “Tight like Mike kinda flow”? Shaaddsouza
She asked me to be on the remix, I wrote some stuff and it wasn’t very good, basically! So it never saw the light of day. Getting mentioned in things like that, or rap and stuff, is a nice feeling. If I could speak to me 20 years ago, I would definitely say things are going to be all right.