Out on the Boos

First published in Bigwig magazine, March 1995

Yah Boo sucks … I’d been writing for Bigwig for three months at this stage. You’d think they might spell my name correctly.

It’s 8pm in deepest Pimlico and Martin Carr rises to his feet to see off Regional Press Interviewer Number 29. He steals a cursory spoonful of the cold beans which made up his (aborted) evening meal and ushers in Number 30 — me. He offers tea and coffee, but the heat in here is stifling — I decline. Then the vodka bottle in the corner comes into view.

“Do you fancy a Bloody Mary? I think I’m gonna have one. Here you go — say when …” Martin Carr, with four albums and 90 songs under his belt, will be living in hotel rooms like this (and much, much worse) for the next 12 months. He’s 26.¹

Now the new Boo Radleys record Wake Up is an altogether darker beast than its predecessors. If you’re one of those people who listens to the lyrics (and the Radleys do attract their fair share) you’ll notice that much of the whimsy that characterised songs such as Barney and Me has given way to some pretty stark reflection. You might suppose (oh alright then, I did too) that this is down to our Mart tiring of the whole pop-biz charade and hankering after home — especially with two of his all-time heroes (Messrs Cobain and Bukowski) checking out last year. In fact it’s just the opposite. Much of his frustration stems from a move to Preston, Lancashire. He actually misses mixing it down the Mixer with the indie aristocracy.

‘It’s a really annoying habit of mine that makes things so much worse. I’ll just go down to the studio and tell everything to the tape machine instead of telling people how I feel’

“I think that the whole album on first listen sounds really poppy,” mumbles the softly spoken scouser, “but lyrically it is fucking depressing, isn’t it?”

So what was the problem then? “Well like I say, I was just living in a place that I really didn’t want to live in, I mean I don’t know anyone in Preston at all. And I was really missing London. I’d lived there for the three previous years and got really fond of it. So no, it wasn’t the best of times and a lot of the album is about that.”

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If you’re wondering why our pop-star pal upped sticks for Preston in the first place, it was because his girlfriend teaches nearby², but on the track 4AM Conversation we hear how the friction this caused finally came to a head. There’s shades of Kurt ’n’ Courtney in the lines “What is this poison you carry like a curse /I’m your lover not your nurse”, and the song ends with the plea, “Don’t stay here for me” screamed over and over again. So were you fucking up out there then, Martin?

“Well, all that’s nothing to do with drugs or anything,” he assures me. “They’re all things that were said to me one night. It’s to do with the way that I keep things bottled up. I mean she didn’t realise how I felt about living there until she heard the songs. It’s a really annoying habit of mine that makes things so much worse. You know, I’ll just go down to the studio and tell everything to the tape machine instead of telling her how I feel.”

So did anything positive come out of all this (apart from a top album of course)? “Well yeah, she had to sit there and listen to this stuff with all these people around and it got us talking about it and got her thinking about what she really wanted to do. And she’s fucking sick of teaching anyway, wants to do something nicer so hopefully we’ll be moving back here soon.”³

I remember getting a school report that said: I’d like to be able to comment on Martin’s work, but he hasn’t done any’

Proof then I suppose, that a little suffering can lead to stable relationships and Good Art. Speaking of which, the album’s closer, Wilder is well musicianly isn’t it, with that piano intro and Van Morrison-esque strumming?

“Yeah, embarrassing innit!” laughs Carr, who’s been enjoyably unpretentious throughout and perhaps slightly bewildered at having shared his hassles with so many people (I’m not kidding myself, the Preston affair will have been raised in those other 29 interviews). Reflecting on how the album sprawls less than Giant Steps he merely says, “We just finished the songs off properly this time.”

But will this tale have a happy ending? It’s been well documented that Carr simply doesn’t sleep nights. He seizes the lucidity that comes at five in the morning, takes plenty of drugs and often doesn’t know what he’s laid down in the studio from one night to the next. He must be a bit of a loner then, and he must feel permanently jetlagged?

“Well yeah I am,” he admits. “But I’ve always been like that. I was always a bit of a daydreamer at school. I mean I remember getting a report that said ‘Id like to be able to comment on Martin’s work, but he hasn’t done any!””

Well Bigwig says congratulations, 10 out of 10 for this effort and shakes Martin by the hand. As to whether he’ll pour himself another stiff vodka and chill out for the rest of the evening, that’s another matter. For here’s interviewer No 31 at the door.

Footnotes

1. The stiflingly hot apartment, presumably rented by Creation Records while the band were needed in London for promo chores, was actually in Dolphin Square, the same complex where Richey Manic spent his final days. Doing all the talking after having written all the songs, I’m actually surprised Martin Carr waited until 7pm before reaching for the vodka.
2. Now this is a coincidence. It turns out that Martin’s girlfriend was teaching at St Michael’s in Chorley — the purple-uniformed bunch of softies that our school, Parklands, used to have running battles with on Astley Park at the end of every term.
3. I don’t believe Martin came back to London for long. After two more Boos albums, C’mon Kids and Kingsize, he moved to Cardiff where he pursued an intermittently great solo career. He nearly wrote with Olly Murs, who was clearly after some of that Boo Radleys hitmaking magic.