I don't usually like phone interviews because they usually involve some awkward clamping of the dictaphone to my ear whilst frantically waving off colleagues who'd forgotten what I was doing and had come clomping into the room. However I loved this interview because it was so much fun. It was one of those ones where both of you find it so easy to meander off the subject and into made-up worlds of imaginary friends and possible scenarios, which for some reason you both understand. (Because you're both nuts).
Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Native.tv http://www.native.tv in August 2007
(c) Niche News & Publishing Ltd
PAUL STEEL
Hands up if you caught Paul Steel at one of the summer festivals. Worthing’s own curly-haired son grew up listening to XTC, Radiohead and the Beach Boys, pushing his teenage frustrations into music. Now in his early 20s and living in the cultural cocktail that is Brighton, he’s gearing up for the release of his debut single ‘Your Loss’, which has a retro, psychedelic feel to it.The songs are fresh and full of fizzy tang and energy. Over the phone, Paul sounds quite shy but is very friendly and has a smile in his voice. The interview is running a couple of hours late, due to neither of our faults, which makes a lovely change.
We discover we’re practically neighbours (our office is in Havant and he lives in Brighton, a mere… hour down the road). Paul says he quite likes the sort of field the South Coast has around it. “You’re kind of isolated from London yet you’re quite near it. It’s kind of its own world, which I like.”
You were in bands when you were younger, weren’t you? What made you decide to go solo?
"I think I became a bit of a control freak - when I was about 15 I insisted on basically writing all the songs on my own… maybe I was just really eager or something. One human being’s vision as you follow it can be a lot stronger than a sort of diluted thing, and I was into production and stuff so I could do all that at home."
What was your first solo gig like? How long ago was that?
"Oh Jesus, I think it was probably really bad! But you’ve got to start somewhere. I think it was in a vegetarian café’s basement; really small."
The basement? Is that not just the fridge?
"Yeah it was. I was competing with lots of peppers and tomatoes. A good audience really. As long as they didn’t throw themselves."
I ask Paul about his mini album ‘April & I’, which he reportedly penned when he was just 17. "Well it’s about growing up in a sort of Woody Allen way, worrying about everything and nothing going right, and conjuring up this imaginary friend who assists me on my travels through life and gets corrupted by girls and drugs. There’s a nice little twist at the end. It’s quite a simple little story but it was fun to write."
It sounds like fun. And April’s the imaginary friend?
"Yes she is. She’s currently teaching origami in… Sweden."
I was going to ask to have a word with her now but she’s obviously not there.
"I could give you her number but she’s very selective about who she talks to."
Oh, really!
"She only talks to me really. She’s a bit imaginary. That’s the problem."
Was she a real imaginary friend when you were a child?
"Not really I think, I mean I think not really as a child! As soon as I stepped into adulthood, that’s when the imaginary friends came. But we’re good mates. She’s had a bit of a drugs problem but she got over it."
When I was younger for some reason my imaginary friends were people like Mick Jagger and Les Dennis.
"Mick Jagger was your imaginary friend? How did you manage that?"
I don’t know. They all lived in the garden.
"That’s mental, like Mick Jagger! My imaginary friend was drawn out of crayon. You’ve got a rock legend. (April and Mick) could start a band."
You had an imaginary friend competition on your last tour. Did you have any good entries for that?
"Yeah. The best one was in Dundee [he starts laughing] This guy submitted one called Jobby which was, you know just a poo. I had to ask onstage who submitted it and he said we didn’t include the brown so he had to mix colours. That was definitely the best. There were a few other exceptional ones but I think that one stood out, definitely."
What did he win for a prize? An imaginary holiday?
"Yes, an imaginary holiday in Greece with imaginary money. So we treated him good."
That was during the tour in March, which was Paul’s first tour with his band. “You’re in a small space with a lot of people so you become quite close and we’ve got on really well and did a really good tour.”
The ‘lot of people’ include Rachel on guitar (“a sort of axe-wielding goddess”), Mak on bass (“very bouncy Japanese bassist… a really nice guy”), two backing singers and “a seasoned drummer on drums, funnily enough.” Paul says he didn’t have anyone to play with live until he met the band and then began to rehearse together, and says: “I think we’ve got [a lineup] that’s good to go.”
Support acts were local bands. According to Paul, the Beatles were very interested but he didn’t have the time for them. “They’ve got some nice songs but I don’t think that it’ll work out for them.”
This neatly leads us on wondering whatever Ringo is up to nowadays, in the post-Thomas The Tank Engine years. Paul says he sees himself in a few years narrating children’s TV, Ringo or Neil Morrissey style. “That’s the dream really.”
You could bring in a few extra characters, like the person clearing the leaves off the line.
“Exactly. And the suicidal man who constantly tries to sit in front of a moving train. We’ll try to make it like he’s severely injured himself but doesn’t die. Kids, don’t sit on railway tracks ‘cause you might nearly die, but not quite. And that’s worse.”
‘Your Loss’ is Paul’s first single, which he’s excited about. I heard it being played in Asda a few days ago (cake and bread aisle), so I think that means he’s already super-famous. “It’s about a sort of very cynical broken relationship that is gonna end and it’s a bit of a middle finger raising song! It’s my oldest song, I wrote it with my old band so it’s got a lot of my 15 year old angst in there."
But it sounds so cheerful.
"Well that’s the problem with my songs, I write them and they’re all very cheerful and I think I can’t leave it like that, because it sounds like a Christmas song. So I make all these sort of dirty horrible lyrics. There you go, that’s the way it goes."
The conversation turns to forthcoming album ‘Moon Rock'. “I’m a big fan of the second half actually, we don’t perform it so much live but production-wise it’s a bit more developed, a bit more subtle.
"And there’s a song, ‘A Summer Song’, which we never thought was going to make the album but the mix turned out really well and the orchestra sounded really nice in it and I’ve become quite fond of it. I’m looking forward to seeing what people think of it.”
One of Paul’s songs was named after a line from Peep Show – ‘Honking (On My Crackpipe)’, something which Super Hans was doing. Have many other people been talking to you about Peep Show today? “Not a lot actually! I have had a conversation about crack. I bring it on myself, but erm… I don’t want to talk about crack, horrible. I’m a big Peep Show fan, I love my observational comedies.” He calls the last series “absolutely brutal” and says the second is probably his favourite.
Away from television and back onto music. With the festival season now drawing to a close, we spoke to Paul shortly before he played Belladrum and V. “We haven’t done a whole load of festivals so it’s still quite new and exciting for us, so we’re going to go up there and play our hearts out.”
I don’t think you need your wellies at the moment do you?
“I’m not sure… I mean I’ve been burnt with the wellies thing with Glastonbury. I had a welly stolen from my tent. Just one welly. So I had to go on a sort of hopping mission in the mud to get some new ones. So I’m not sure what to do, I might just plastic bag it.”
The band also made it over to Fuji Rock in Japan and Haldern in Germany which Paul describes as ‘awesome’ and ‘fun’ respectively.
There’s not much time left, but after looking at the favourites on Paul’s website we ask one of our own – Top Five Places To Visit? Paul thinks for a bit and decides on:
1. Paris (“That’s a good one”)
2. San Diego (“Pretty amazing”)
3. Naeba (“Which is where Fuji-Rock is, amazing countryside there”)
4. Croatia (“Surprisingly a lot of fun, although I was a lot younger then.” Why, does it have some kind of age-defying thing? “Yeah, I went there about 36, and came back three.”)
5. Worthing (“A great holiday destination. It’s got shops and everything.”)
We’ll leave you with this little quote nicked off the press release (as that is what they’re for): “Sound a bit like Queen meeting the Beach Boys in the bedroom of a 15 year old boy wearing batman pyjamas! Certainly a talent.” – Sean Ono Lennon. And if the son of a man whose ex-bandmate narrated Thomas says so, it must be true.
Paul Steel releases ‘Your Loss’ through Fascination/Polydor on September 3rd
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