GUY GARVEY v3.qxp_Layout 2 27/05/2022 14:14 Page 1
Elbow return
As Elbow prepare to headline the third night of Bristol Sounds on 24 June – returning to the harbourside for the first time since 2018 – Melissa Blease sits down with frontman Guy Garvey to talk early memories, meeting McCartney, performing with dear friends, and much, much more...
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f you’re a thinking person, there’s a point in your life when you start realising that the way you are and who you are is a result of the people around you; like, you're not on a journey to somewhere else: This Is Who You Are.” If you’re Guy Garvey – lead singer of Elbow, longterm BBC Radio 6 Music presenter and all-round lovely person – it’s at that point that you write a song called Dear Friends, the final track on his band’s fifth studio album Build a Rocket Boys!, released in March 2011. And, if you’re one of the 350,000+ people who own that album, you know that the track is one of the most elegantly understated, beautiful tributes to friendship in the history of songwriting. 18 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE
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JUNE 2022
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No 211
But hang on: aren’t rock stars of Guy’s magnitude all about ego, narcissism and what wonderful things they do for other people rather than what wonderful things other people do for them? “I’m a very, very lucky man,” he says, talking to me shortly before embarking on a tour that takes them to the Glastonbury Festival straight after their gig at the Lloyds Amphitheatre in Bristol on Friday 24 June. “I've really loved my life so far, and I’ve appreciated every second of that life.” Guy’s much-appreciated life began in Bury in March 1974. The son of a newspaper proofreader father and a police officer (latterly a psychologist) mother, five elder Garvey girls preceded him and a younger brother Marcus (yup, Marcus Garvey the actor) completed
