Interview - Gary Go

Aaaargh, first interview in about a year. I get very nervous before interviews anyway, though once you've been in the room for two minutes everything's usually all right. I forwarded this onto Mr Go once it was written up. He apologised again for touching the dictaphone. I'm calm...

First published on mintsouth.com in Mar 2009
Words - Suzy Sims
Editor - Rob Ball
(c) mintsouth

GARY GO INTERVIEW @ WEDGEWOOD ROOMS, SOUTHSEA

It’s a lovely breezy Sunday in Southsea. Many people are today hurrying to petrol stations all across the UK, fighting each other for the last bunch of flowers and considering taking the ‘rents for a special meal at the nearest Harvester. Most people that is; apart from the handful of hardcore Gary Go fans stamping their feet outside the Wedgewood Rooms, a slightly hassled-looking tour manager, and Gary Go himself. How does your mother feel about you missing Mothers’ Day, Gary? “Not happy,” he admits.

London-based Gary Go is a snappily-dressed writer of dramatic pop-rock tunes. You may have caught him supporting the likes of Amy Macdonald and The Feeling, putting heart, soul and everything else into his singing and performance. He was cherry-picked by comeback champions Take That to support on their tour. He also wears glasses. But more of that later.

Slender, neatly suited and bespectacled, Gary politely offers to fetch me a drink before settling down to the interview in the dressing room. He’s friendly and eager to chat. It’s the first night of his joint headline tour with VV Brown, and he appears quietly confident.

How did you feel when you woke up this morning and thought, I’m going to Portsmouth tonight? “I felt good, last time I was in Portsmouth I had a really, really good time playing with The Script. The audience were amazing and I’ve wanted to come back here for a while. I’m excited about the tour. VV’s cool, I just met her now for the first time, it should be fun. I feel a bit under-prepared but it should be good.”

Is this your first headline tour? “Yeah. That is very exciting. Especially because I’ve been doing a lot of supports for the last year or so with bigger acts, so it’s nice.”

Nice to have your face on those posters? “Yeah! Definitely,” he laughs.
You could steal them and have them all round your room. “Exactly, frame them, put them up in the studio.”

Give them out to your friends at Christmas. “That would be a pretty cheap Christmas. It’s the thought that counts, right?”

The posters advertising tonight’s gig show Gary’s logo, a Gok-Wan-a-like image, though the man actually has a slight resemblance to Elijah Wood. Let’s talk glasses. “I assume you’re not talking about drinking glasses,” says Gary, quite correctly. I was reading an article on the BBC and one of the first things they seemed to point out is that you wear glasses, like it’s some kind of strange thing.

“I think it’s very odd. I think they’re like ‘wow, you’re making glasses cool’ and I’m like, I think it’s kinda cool to see! It’s become a thing for people, I don’t know. But it gives me an excuse to buy loads of different pairs of glasses now and spoil myself.”

It may surprise you to know that Mr Go was originally christened Mr Baker. Does he get fed up with people asking where his name came from? “No, not at all. There are a few different genuine answers to the same question, but I recall it being given to me by a family friend at a party, and then it kind of took on new meaning and new life as it went on. I got really into Go the game at one point, which is a Japanese board game, it’s about strategy and balancing the mind. I was working in the mail-room of a studio: ‘Gary, go get this, go get that’. So it took on new meaning at different times.”

Gary started out working in a record company “making tea and franking mail and scraping graffiti off walls,” which was how he got into the music industry. “The day after I left school, I just wanted to work in music so I got a job. It’s a good place to start… I started working for Dave Stewart from the Eurhythmics and then I had an interview with Peter Gabriel, I was going to start working at his studio. He was the one who said ‘You should just go and work on your own music’ but I loved working in a record company.”

Gary Go is a solo artist but he’s always seen his music project as a “kind of collective. I mean it’s my songs and I produce the album but there’s loads of musicians and different people I love playing with and recording with.” On tour this time round, the band includes Andreas on guitar, Pete on drums, and Tim on horn and keyboards.

From making tea to the Wedgewood Rooms and onto Wembley, Gary Go will be opening for Take That on their summer tour. “Jason Orange phoned me up personally – no he didn’t. my manager phoned me up and told me about it, it’s great. I get to play Wembley Stadium which is right by where I grew up so that’s pretty cool. It’s a weird gig that to be honest, you’re opening such a huge event, I don’t know how it’s going to be.”

Do you feel like you have to do something special? Gary starts to look a little nervous. “It will be light out which I don’t like, I like it when it’s dark. It will be like playing a festival in some way, there will be a lot of people talking and it’s their day out, I don’t know how it goes down playing a show of that size when people haven’t come to see you. Step up to the challenge, that’s the plan.”

Gary Go’s first proper single release was the pleasantly epic drama-pop ‘Wonderful’, which we’ll make clear is not some sort of ego trip. “It’s so funny, people think that I’m saying that I am wonderful. I really don’t have any pity for people who misinterpret the song, it’s just they’re not listening properly.

“I was feeling pretty down and insecure, I was living on my own in New Jersey, making a start on the album. I didn’t have a big record deal or anything or a big producer, I was just doing it on my own. I had no guidance, and started dipping a bit in my self esteem. I guess I wrote that song to bring me back on track and people have been finding the message in how it was written.

“I got a long message from someone yesterday, this girl she was really nervous and she really wanted this job, She was going through her iPod as she was waiting to be called and ‘Wonderful’ just came on random shuffle, and that perked her up and made her feel good about everything. She got the job and she’s coming to one of the gigs on tour and wants to buy me a drink!”

“Songs which boost me up, there are lots from artists I love: ‘Heroes’, ‘Under Pressure’ which was the first record I ever bought, ‘Sledgehammer’, ‘Black and Gold’, ‘Walking On A Dream’.”

I can recommend The Hours ‘Ali In The Jungle.’ “That’s cool, I should check that out. I don’t know much of their music but they’re cool. Art scene, Damien Hirst, right?”

As well as helping people pass job interviews, Gary has been working on a special project, a track called ‘Heart Shaped Balloon’. “I was in my kitchen making tea and I looked out the window and there was this heart shaped balloon caught in the tree. I was like, that’s a beautiful image. So I posted it on Twitter trying to get people’s lyrical ideas for this song and loads of people have posted ideas in. Now I’m going to put the song together and it will be the first Twitter co-write. Equal royalties for everyone… I was thinking maybe it will go to charity, or a charity who retrieve heart shaped balloons. And I want to get everyone that messaged in to come and sing on it as well.”

The next proper release will be ‘Open Arms’, and the video was only filmed last week. “I went to Mars for the video. There and back in a day. That’s very impressive. I was an astronaut.”

“I ran into an old school friend I hadn’t seen in years, he was like ‘oh whatever happened to Joe, the guy in maths class, and whatever happened to…’ and I just wrote a list of whatever happened to’s and then that became the basis for the song. And it’s another self esteem track in a weird kind of way, and that’s a thread that runs through the album about trying to see the good side of dark situations.”

Ah yes, the album. It’s been made in the Catskill mountains, Prague, London, and ‘all sorts of places.’ We’re trying to discuss it but the dressing room is echoing to the sound of drums onstage. “I’m picking up the Dictaphone now because the band are playing. The album is out May 18th. Is that bad that I picked up your Dictaphone?” says Gary, looking at me sideways. “Did I cross the line?”

Well, I’m not going to come onstage tonight and pick up your keyboard. “Oh no! You’re getting really upset with me. [The album] has been made with passion, an independently made record, with a lot of love and a load of great musicians were playing and singing on there. And heartfelt songs, organic instruments and I don’t know what more I can say, When it’s your first album it feels like it’s your whole life that you’ve been doing it. I look forward to you hearing it. Then you can slate it,” he jokes.

And with that Gary Go shakes my hand, thanks me several times, adjusts his black-rimmed spectacles and steps outside to cheerfully greet his fans. The tour is about to begin…

http://www.myspace.com/garygo