20 | July 31, 2014 | cambridge-news.co.uk | Cambridge News
Music
Wet Wet Wet: “We’re all coming up to 50 now and no-one’s died!”
T
HE Love really is All Around at Graeme Clark’s house (ahem). Instead of throwing down the phone, stalking outside and shouting at a pair of deer munching on his begonias, the Scottish bassist of soft rock crooners Wet Wet Wet is actually a bit overcome (“it’s lovely seeing them so close”). With a back catalogue of more than 30 hit singles, including three numbers ones – most famously their 15-week chart topping cover of The Troggs’ Love Is All Around – Wet Wet Wet have overcome royalty disputes, drug and alcohol addictions and that inescapable Four Weddings and a Funeral soundtrack. Fronted by heartthrob Marti Pellow, with Tommy Cunningham on drums and Neil Mitchell on keys, last year saw them take to arenas on a greatest hits tour featuring three new songs. When we talk though, Graeme’s in the middle of a Wimbledon and World Cup relay (“when the pop of the Wimbledon ball’s happening I can’t deny I fall in love with England”), and is all kinds of excited about playing Newmarket Nights. Will you be having a bit of a flutter on the horses while you’re in Newmarket? “Aye, you can’t
The 80s heartthrobs are back and playing Newmarket Nights. ELLA WALKER tries to interview the band’s bassist Graeme Clarke while deer eat all his flowers ᔡ Wet Wet Wet, Newmarket Nights, The July Course, Friday, August 15, 15 minutes after the final race of the day. Tickets £12-£35 from 0844 579 3010 / newmarketracecourses.co.uk.
go to a racecourse and not have a gamble can you? We’ve been told there’s a certain window that we’ve got to sound check in, in case we spook the horses! I don’t want any of the trainers coming back and saying ‘hey! That base note really put my horse off there!’ And I’ll be saying ‘I had £20 on it as well!’” What should we expect from your set? All the old favourites? “When you buy a Wet Wet Wet ticket you know what you’re going to get. I think there are certain songs that we have to play, if we didn’t play them, man, I think they’d pin us to the racecourse and let the horses run over us.” But there’ll be a few new tracks too…? “For me the lifeblood of the
band is about new music. We’ve got to be current otherwise we just turn into this nostalgia band. And that’s not to say we won’t be playing any old stuff because we will, the last thing any Wet Wet Wet fan wants to hear is us coming on stage and saying: ‘Right, I hope you like our new direction! We’re going to play a lot of B-sides here and some tracks that you won’t know!’” You’re not going to indulge yourselves then. “That just wouldn’t happen. And I don’t think I would enjoy it either. We feed off a crowd, we like to grab a hold of the crowd and take it on a musical journey with us. And our musical journey is all about hit
records. We’ve got loads of them, so there’d be no point us going away and doing obscure songs.” Talking of hit records, are you still fond of Love Is All Around, or have you grown sick of it? “I love that song and there was a time, back then when it came out, that you couldn’t move without hearing it on the radio. When a song gets like that, just done to death in a short space of time, then yeah, you do gravitate away from it, but it’s 20 years since that song came out so there’s a good bit of space between us.” So you’re enjoying performing it again? “It’s not as intense as it was back then, so you can look at the song with different eyes and different ears too.
GREAT SCOTS: From left, Neil Mitchell, Marti Pellow, Graeme Clarke and Tommy Cunningham
Writer: Ella Walker Email: ella.walker@cambridge-news.co.uk
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Ultimately for me it’s a good song, and there can never be enough good songs in the world. I stand by it, and when I hear it on the radio today my chest bursts with pride. As my wife goes, oh no, not again…” Would you call it a career highlight? “That song gave me a life beyond my wildest dreams really. I owe that song a lot. It’s the kind of song that’s in your highlights and in your lowlights too. It crosses over all sorts of boundaries.” What do you mean by it being a “lowlight”? “It was probably the closest we got to seeing what One Direction have. It becomes a really intense thing because your life is just all about that. Your life just suddenly becomes engulfed by a three-minute song. Sometimes that can be an unhealthy place. We like to keep things in proper perspective and ultimately, when you fly around the world as fast as that there’s always going to be something to trip you up. And I used One Direction there – and I’m not saying we were anything like One Direction, because it’s silly intense for them – but you can see people are just waiting for something to drop, waiting for the cracks to show, and I feel for these guys.” It’s quite sad really, being in a fish bowl like that. “That’s just the nature of the music business sometimes. That’s why I
say it is a high point but it’s a low point too because suddenly your life’s not your own anymore. You can’t complain about it because ultimately this is why you’re doing it. You don’t go out there and say you want to play in a band and have a number 36 hit. You play in a band because you want to be number one.” The attention and the pressure must be tough to handle though. “I understand why people complain, but I don’t always agree with it because, listen man, you should be thankful that it’s happening to you, and that’s what was told to me when I was complaining. It’s easy to be negative.” Do you feel that you’ve all changed, as men and musicians since you started out? “We’re all coming up to 50 now and no-one’s died, there’s been no messy divorces in the band, so in terms of that, we’re actually doing all right. We’re doing well, and we’re all still friends. Ultimately we’re friends first and we just happen to play in a band and we just happened to have been successful.” Have you grown closer over time? “We used to live in each other’s pockets and we don’t now. We’re old enough to understand it wouldn’t really work at this stage in our lives. We need our space, we need to get away from each other, but we also need to come back together. I live by the philosophy, live each day as
it comes. comes And I apply that to lots of aspects of my life. One song at a time. One gig at a time.” That seems like a sensible approach. How much has the music industry changed since you started out? *At this point Graeme suddenly stops answering questions* “Do you know what’s funny? I’m looking out my front window and there’s a little fawn deer just walked into my garden! I got a little bit – and it’s eating all my bloody flowers, man! It’s just been spooked by me, arghh, for goodness sake.” Ha. Really? Are you a big gardener? “Yeah! I like the garden. There’s actually two in my garden, that’s incredible. I’m just outside London really, just at the start of the countryside. Wow man, I’m kinda
freaked out, out it’s so fantastic to see it so close.” *He disappears again* “That’s amazing. Sorry, I’m getting side-tracked! What was the question? I think the music industry has moved on a good bit, just in terms of how you sell records, there’s lots of X Factor-type programmes, lots of stuff like that… Sorry, I’m kinda freaked out by these two deer, I can’t concentrate on my, on my, they’re, they’re just eating all my flowers! (Laughing) “They’re kinda stuck in my garden. They came in and they can’t find the way out!” By now his musings on what his parents would have said if he’d gone to them and explained how he wanted to be in a band (“you need to go and get a job in a ship yard,”) are lost in worries over the deer. To be honest, you can’t blame him.
Ultimately we’re friends first and we just happen to play in a band and we just happened to have been successful Graeme Clarke