Guy Garvey

Guy Garvey0:00

Hello, I'm Guy Garvey, and this is a download of my Desert Island Discs. An absolute privilege for me to be on the programme. I hope you like it. The details of all the tracks I've chosen are on the Desert Island Discs website. The tracks have been shortened because of rights reasons. I hope you enjoy them anyway. Here it is.

Presenter0:34

My castaway this week is Guy Garvey, front man of the group Elbow. His voice and lyrics have helped the band win pretty much every music prize going, headlining Glastonbury too, and playing at the closing ceremony of the London Olympics. Yet his image is that of someone who might still be scraping gum off the carpet of Andy's record shop in Bolton, just an everyday, low key, unassuming bloke, except, of course, that he isn't. He's penning and performing songs filled with intimacy, optimism, and lyricism that strike a chord with millions of fans.

Presenter1:07

For a long while, his devotees were well versed in the art of delayed gratification.

Presenter1:12

Elbo's debut album was released eleven years after the band members first made music together.

Presenter1:18

He writes his songs in his journal, and has been keeping a diary since he was fourteen.

Presenter1:23

Maybe it was the peace and calm of the blank page that first appealed. One of seven kids. He says he was brought up in a house full of women that were singing, shouting, arguing, fighting over the bathroom. I'm ruined by these women. Spoilt rotten. So if you were spoilt rotten and Guy Garvey, I wonder if that was good training for being a star in the music business.

Guy Garvey1:43

Yeah, I'm sure, yeah, getting used to being pampered, absolutely.

Presenter1:46

The everyman image, how close is it to are you somebody you haven't come with an entourage today? And we didn't get any riders about sort of only red smarties and things.

Guy Garvey1:51

No, we don't

Guy Garvey1:55

I suppose I do try and maintain it a little bit. I don't wear sunglasses in Manchester.

Guy Garvey2:00

Everywhere else in the world though I feel quite comfortable with it.

Presenter2:02

You've said that when you're inside a song you're at your happiest. That's when you're inside the process of creating it, is it?

Guy Garvey2:09

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter2:09

Yeah, yeah. What is it about that that that you find so enjoyable?

Guy Garvey2:13

It's like finding your footing in a busy river. It's like knowing your way through something and being amazed that you know your way around. I love music so much and I've I still have this sense of wonder when I'm listening to something that somebody else has written. So to be on the inside of that feeling, to sort of still have that feeling of wonder, but it's something that you're creating, it's just addictive.

Presenter2:38

And even when you are singing about sad things, and often you do sing about very sad feelings, you make it sound beautiful. Is that deliberate?

Guy Garvey2:46

Thank you.

Guy Garvey2:47

There is a beauty in in sadness, there is a calmness in melancholy.

Guy Garvey2:52

I'll try and find

Guy Garvey2:54

beauty in in every feeling, you know.

Presenter2:56

for people whose whose life is music.

Presenter2:59

I sometimes wonder if they don't have a very different view of the eights that they want to have. What's been your criteria?

Guy Garvey3:05

It could have been torturous if I'd let it. I've chosen eight that will actually be a practical aid to my existence on a desert island. These are not my favourite songs of all time. These are ones that would be, in the context of complete solitude, the most handy for survival.

Presenter3:14

These are what

Presenter3:20

Well, tell me about your first then. What are we gonna hear?

Guy Garvey3:22

Talk talk, this song is newgrass, I always say I want it playing at my funeral.

Guy Garvey3:27

And I think it's because I want to make everybody I know sit down and listen to it, that's all. It never fails to get me, it never fails to evoke sapling freshness and springtime. It works any time of year, it's not just a spring record, but it's just th the way it picks up and delicately moves around, there's there's like a very subtle bliss to it.

Guy Garvey4:05

Tell them brother, no one is beautiful.

Presenter4:20

That was Talk Talk and part of New Grass. So, um, Guy, Elbow's released six albums to date. The last one going straight in at number one. You have legions of very loyal fans. As I mentioned in the introduction, you've won almost every award going. But even non-fans, I'm sure, will know your song one day like this. And it has the soaring opening strings. Ev when you do it in concert, everybody knows all the words and sings along. Don French and Michael Kane chose it when they came on as castaways. You weren't tempted at all, were you, to choose it?

Speaker 24:38

Mm-hmm.

Guy Garvey4:51

No, no, no, it wasn't.

Presenter4:52

I'm asking that'cause I'm wondering if you're sick of it by now.

Guy Garvey4:56

Really, it's such an enormous tune for us.

Guy Garvey4:59

Changed our fortunes completely, but also.

Guy Garvey5:03

Thousands and thousands of people get married to it every year, and it's become something we didn't realize it was going to be.

Presenter5:08

To stand then in a stadium in front of how many people at Glastonbury did you play to the biggest?

Guy Garvey5:12

Yeah, Donna, upwards of 1890,000.

Presenter5:15

80,090,000 people are looking back at you and singing this song that you were sitting writing in your journal. Is there any way you can convey to us what that experience is like?

Guy Garvey5:20

You wish

Guy Garvey5:25

It's such a strange thing because the song belongs to the Five Boys, you know, it it belongs to the band as all our music does. I think that's part of being able to cope with People singing your words back to you. My words are part of what I do with Elbow. I don't feel sole ownership of that song. So it's easy to share with people outside the band, as it is with all our music.

Presenter5:41

Okay.

Presenter5:47

It's time for your second piece of music, Guy Garvey. Tell me about this disc we're going to hear now. What is it and why particularly have you chosen it?

Guy Garvey5:54

This is Thank You for Talking Me Africa by Sly and the Family Stone. It's an extended, jammed-out, slowed-down version of one of their big hits. Thank you for letting me be myself again.

Guy Garvey6:06

It's important to me because when the band got together and started playing together, none of us could play.

Guy Garvey6:13

And we learnt our instruments, and we l and we learnt our craft, if you like.

Guy Garvey6:16

listening to funk music. We played really bad funk music for quite a while while we were learning to play. Your immediate sort of goals at that age are to be able to play faster than anyone in the world and as more notes than anyone in the world and I used to scat.

Presenter6:32

Ah.

Guy Garvey6:33

Yeah.

Guy Garvey6:36

It was it was yeah, it was bold. And then it all slowed down and at its languid sort of furthest extreme is this song, Thank You for Talks to Me Africa. Uh I can't tell you everything about our legendary pursuits at that time. Yeah, let's just say that uh our legend pursuits at the time uh

Guy Garvey6:56

Attracted us to this music and also uh chocolate.

Presenter6:58

Yeah.

Guy Garvey7:00

Yeah.

Speaker 37:12

Damn it.

Speaker 37:24

Uh

Guy Garvey7:24

Uh

Speaker 37:24

Do you think

Guy Garvey7:30

Uh

Presenter7:34

That was Sly in the Family Stone and thank you for talking to me, Africa. And you were saying just going into that, Guy Garvey, that that bound you together, first of all, your musical tastes when elbow they weren't elbow then, but when you got together with your mates and you started playing music. Do you still listen to it now?

Guy Garvey7:47

It's the last track we listen to before we go onstage, every gig, yeah.

Presenter7:51

You're on a an international tour right now, on the the road for a lot of the time. Uh the tour bus, what's that like these days?

Guy Garvey7:57

Well, it varies country to country. The American Torbuses are great big chrome things w and the front windows go floor to ceiling. So if you're sat next to the driver, you feel like you're flying down the highway. It's very comfortable these days. Um

Guy Garvey8:12

Memory foam is a a revelation.

Presenter8:15

Do you sleep on that? Is it like

Guy Garvey8:16

Yeah, and I've got a pillow that remembers my head.

Guy Garvey8:19

It's amazing.

Presenter8:19

It doesn't sound very sex and drugs and rock and roll, I was hoping for more than that.

Guy Garvey8:23

There was never sex on the bus, very impractical. You're separated from the world by a curtain and there's five immediate band members plus our touring crew. You've got at least thirteen people on. So if you can have sex in a bunk, then good luck to you.

Presenter8:35

Perfect.

Guy Garvey8:36

Yeah, you'd have to be very small.

Presenter8:37

So you were born in Bury, just outside Manchester, nineteen seventy four. Your mother now I read your mother had been a policewoman, but she retrained as a counsellor.

Guy Garvey8:46

She brought up seven children and then she re tr retrained and became a counsellor, yeah, when we'd all moved out.

Presenter8:51

Right. And what sort of woman was she and is she?

Guy Garvey8:54

She is a very bright, very politically engaged, very loving, spiritual woman, very elegant as well. She's uh seventy eight I think she is now, but you wouldn't know it. She's very beautiful.

Presenter9:07

So you were born the sixth child and you were the first boy, and as I mentioned in the introduction, born into this, you know, very vibrant, very female household, really. Did did you like it? Did you feel at home with all those girls around?

Guy Garvey9:21

Absolutely. Um, my brother Marcus was born

Guy Garvey9:24

Close enough in age to me that I had my little buddy with me when it got a bit much.

Presenter9:28

Yeah.

Guy Garvey9:29

We could run off and climb a tree, you know.

Presenter9:32

And your father worked night shifts.

Guy Garvey9:34

Yeah.

Presenter9:34

Was that deliberate to get out of a house full of women with carmen rollers and all the rest?

Guy Garvey9:39

Never

Presenter9:40

It might well have been. Tell me more about your dad. What are your memories of him? When you were little, growing up, what was dad like?

Guy Garvey9:45

Dad worked very hard. When I was really little, me and my brother had fight over waking him up in the morning. He's six foot four, Dad, and he's a big chap. Enormous hands. We call him Hoth Wamper, which is a Star Wars character with massive hands. Because of his his night shift work, I'd perhaps see him

Guy Garvey10:03

On a Tuesday he had a night at home, and he'd cut all the fingernails in the house, and towel all the hair dry, and uh we'd watch the two Ronnies or whatever.

Guy Garvey10:11

And then after my mum and dad split up, I actually saw a lot more of him. We had tea at my dad's house every Wednesday and Friday, meet my brother.

Presenter10:18

You were twelve, then, were you?

Guy Garvey10:19

Yeah, and as is quite often the case, the fact that my mum and dad split and divorced after the initial sadness of that had subsided, uh got to know em both as people a lot more, I think, than I would have done otherwise.

Presenter10:32

These days when uh marriages break down, it's very often the case that people will sit the children around the table and talk about it together. It it wasn't so much the case, you know, twenty, thirty years ago. What what happened when your parents split up? How did they explain it to you as a twelve year old?

Guy Garvey10:45

It was a case of.

Guy Garvey10:47

Mum left for a few days, and we knew that she was safe. We knew it she was at her friend's house, but they'd had their last argument, sort of thing. Mum came back and dad moved out. And

Guy Garvey10:58

I was told I was the man of the house, uh which was perhaps a bit more responsibility than I needed at that age, but I think probably the best of the thinking at the time to do with it with a young man. And I was told that my dad would only be a mile down the road and that he'd always be there, and that has proved to be the case, you know. My dad was always working on a friend's car on the path, and he got me my own set of overalls when I was really little, and I used to slide underneath the car with him, and he'd he'd find a random screw on the floor, and he'd say, Find me a washer for that, would you, son? and I'd end up rooting through these drawers for hours and hours and feeling important, but in retrospect he was just keeping me busy.

Presenter11:35

But in return.

Presenter11:38

Perfect child-minding skills, I would call it. Yes. Time for some more music, Guy. We're on your third. Just tell me about this.

Guy Garvey11:44

This is very much to do with their an ongoing friendship with the youngest of my sisters, Becky.

Guy Garvey11:51

She's the Beckopedia on my radio programme on Six Music.

Guy Garvey11:54

She's an authority on music and

Speaker 211:56

Yeah.

Guy Garvey11:57

And from being very little, all my sisters played me music, and they all told me why I should like it. But my memories really are of Becky playing me stuff and saying, listen to what happens with this piano here, listen to what happens with this harp here. And it was her that made Early Genesis, for instance. She made that my nursery rhymes. She made that as magical as it possibly could be. And she's constantly introducing me to new music. I've grown up with Joni Mitchell. She's totally part of the family. And our Becky made me compilations whenever the band were going on tour, right from the first tour. And she was working at Granada TV at the time and she said, I've got a compilation for you. And I was like, great, I'll come and pick it up. And she said, I need to be with you when you hear the first song.

Guy Garvey12:41

So I was like, Why? and she went, You'll see. So I met her in Granada Canteen and I can't remember the actor's voice, but there was a chap on Coronation Street who had a really squeaky voice that way. Right, so he's at the next table and I'm finding this very distracting and thinking, Oh, it's him, you know, and uh and she puts the headphones on me and she played this song.

Guy Garvey13:00

And when I recognised the chords, I realized it was a new version of an old favourite, and I was crying before the first lyric. It's such a nostalgic song in the first place, that to hear Joni doing it as an older lady, you feel like you've been with her all that time.

Speaker 213:37

Just before I love God lost, you said

Presenter13:43

I am as constant as a northern star

Presenter13:46

That was Jenny Mitchell and a later recording of a case of you. You said, Guy Garvey, that it was important to you that it was that later recording because somehow she brings all of her experience. You can hear it in her voice, hear it in her delivery. And of course the lyrics of that are sublime for anybody. I imagine who who writes lyrics. I can't work out about you. I read that you just scraped a C in your GCSE English, and I'm wondering how somebody who just scraped a C could manage to write The Bones of You or all the other extraordinary lyrics that you've written. Wh when did you come to language and come to love it?

Speaker 213:58

Sublime for any

Guy Garvey14:15

And what

Guy Garvey14:17

And come to

Guy Garvey14:19

I absorb anything I read, I absorb anything I hear. I remember film dialogue like really, really in quite a lot of detail. If something interests me, it goes in and stays in. But I fell out with school, aged twelve.

Presenter14:32

What happened?

Guy Garvey14:34

It was around the time my mum and dad divorced and I remember at the time feeling terribly guilty for using the divorce as an excuse not to do homework.

Presenter14:34

Uh

Guy Garvey14:42

And getting away with it.

Guy Garvey14:44

But now as an adult looking back, I think

Guy Garvey14:47

Now there's obviously something going on.

Presenter14:48

Yeah, so it wasn't actually an excuse, it was a reason.

Guy Garvey14:51

Yes, yeah. But at the time I felt like it was an excuse, I felt guilty, you know.

Presenter14:55

Were you getting a hard time at school?

Guy Garvey14:57

Initially, at primary school, there was some bullying going on. I mean, never, you know, the kind of awful things you hear about. Not not, you know, really awful, but.

Guy Garvey15:04

Bad enough for me not to want to go.

Presenter15:06

Right, by classmates and people.

Guy Garvey15:07

Yeah.

Presenter15:08

You're a big guy, why would they be bullying the big guy?

Guy Garvey15:11

I think it's quite obvious to anybody who engages me that I might be big but I'm not much of a challenge. Somebody looks at me wrong in the street, part of me agrees with them, like, Oh, yeah, what have I done wrong? you know, if they look at me wrong. And uh I thought everybody felt like that, but

Guy Garvey15:27

But people were better or worse at disguising it, but actually it's only some people who feel like that.

Presenter15:32

I think a lot of people feel like that, and I certainly think a lot of people feel like that through their teenage years. They feel a sense of of inferiority and disconnect. Has has that resolved itself for you through all the success and the millions of albums and the adulation? Or is it still?

Guy Garvey15:36

Yeah.

Guy Garvey15:45

Node

Guy Garvey15:46

I've learnt how to catch it and control it and steer it and use it to write songs.

Presenter15:52

So when you feel it on your shoulder or knocking at the door of your head, what do you do these days? How do you marshal it?

Guy Garvey15:58

I'm currently trying to train myself not to throw whiskey at it. If I've got to do a performance, then I I tend to have to have a drink.

Presenter16:05

There's a lot of drink in your lyrics.

Guy Garvey16:07

Yeah, I really enjoy a drink.

Presenter16:09

And I read that th two, one, two, three G G and T's before you go onstage would be standard.

Guy Garvey16:15

That's the whole band, yeah. And that that's actually that's conservative as well.

Presenter16:18

Actually, that's con

Guy Garvey16:21

Yeah.

Presenter16:22

When you came in today, I was instantly struck by how very healthy you look. You look like you've lost a lot of weight. You look like there might be a gym involved in your weekly routine. I don't know. Are you consciously trying to sort of not be too boozy or not be too indulgent these days?

Guy Garvey16:26

Thank you.

Speaker 216:26

Uh

Guy Garvey16:27

Look

Speaker 216:28

Yeah.

Guy Garvey16:36

Um yes, because I want to do it for longer than than I than I could do if I don't curb it a little bit.

Presenter16:39

Yeah.

Presenter16:42

So much to talk about. Let's have some music for now though, Guy Garvey. Tell me what we're going to hear next. This is your fourth.

Guy Garvey16:47

This is Public Enemy. It's not my favourite Public Enemy song, but it reminds me of my friends. When everyone went to university, I think that was possibly my first heartbreak.

Guy Garvey16:57

Because there was a good dozen friends disappeared in one weekend.

Guy Garvey17:02

But they've all come back to Manchester and they're all settled and having families there now. So we still see each other and if this goes on, nobody keeps their seat, you know, everybody's up. So this'll help me on my desert island picture my mates dancing whenever I want. It's called Give It Up.

Speaker 317:28

It's another record, check it, man. Nothing to put my brothers and sisters on it. Beth man, you know we cheated to what he wanted, you know, you bought it. Sucking up to the devil, stepping down a level. And so they fear is you, who protects us from us and you for you. Yesterday, Campbell, how s

Presenter17:48

That was public enemy and gave it up. You now, Guy Garvey, I understand, have an honorary doctorate of the arts and the freedom of the town of Bury. You mentioned about that, you know, that was your first heartbreak to watch some of your friends, uh, a dozen of them or so, go off to university. You didn't go to university'cause you didn't presumably have the results, but your sister marched you to a sixth form college and said what to you?

Speaker 217:54

Yeah.

Speaker 317:54

No arts, yes.

Speaker 217:56

Bury

Guy Garvey18:10

Argina, I went round to her house, I'm not sure why. Uh she said, What six one college are you going to? and I said, I'm not. She was like, You're bleeding R. And she yes, she did. She literally marched me up, enrolled me in Stand College in Whitefield. And yeah, I still didn't go to my classes and things like that. I just sort of I get I got kicked out every term, apart from the last one, when two of the GCSEs I resat, I managed to scrape C's at again. I didn't know what I wanted to do at that age, but I started singing in the common room, showing off initially in any way I could, just being loud and

Guy Garvey18:44

And then singing, and and that's when I met Mark and the rest of the boys. So it worked.

Presenter18:48

When you met them, there is that wonderful feeling of somebody feeling like a fish in water suddenly when they're surrounded. It can happen in an office, it can happen on a building site, it can happen in a band where they think, I'm among my people now.

Guy Garvey18:57

Big five.

Guy Garvey18:59

Oh, yeah. You know, very much so, yeah. It was w our first rehearsal was at St Anne's Church Hall in Tottington in Bury.

Presenter19:00

No f

Guy Garvey19:06

And Jup's drum kit was held together with bits of chemistry set and I didn't have a microphone stand and we were all going through one tiny little piece of equipment to make a noise of any kind. And I remember I think we played Johnny Be Good and the Introduction to a Simple Mind song.

Guy Garvey19:25

And we only knew the intro. Don't you forget about me, that one. So we knew the hey, hey, hey, hey. That's all we knew, that bit.

Presenter19:29

Uh

Guy Garvey19:33

But I remember saying to him We'll be signed in six months.

Presenter19:36

And

Presenter19:37

Yeah, how long before you were signed?

Guy Garvey19:39

good uh good seven, eight years, maybe more than that.

Presenter19:42

Yeah.

Guy Garvey19:43

Goal

Presenter19:44

Bling.

Guy Garvey19:45

We thought we were good when we weren't.

Guy Garvey19:49

I'm sure some people would say we're still not.

Presenter19:51

And obviously you would have to be earning a living. Go run through some of the jobs that you had while you were also making music.

Guy Garvey19:58

As sold double glazing.

Guy Garvey20:00

Yeah.

Presenter20:00

See, I read that and I didn't believe it for a minute.

Guy Garvey20:02

Well, I was very good at it, but my conscience couldn't deal with it, so I I didn't do it for very long.

Presenter20:09

And scraping the gum off the carpet. I think it was on Christmas Eve, wasn't it? In Andy's Records, yeah, in Bolton.

Guy Garvey20:14

Yeah. In Bolton. My lowest ebb, which I've I've been very lucky in this respect. Uh my mum kicked me out and then I lived in this party squat for uh twelve months where I met most of my friends. And then uh I moved in with my dad for a bit and that didn't work. He was I think enjoying being on his own by that point. So after a few months I moved in with my sister in Bolton.

Presenter20:38

Why did your mum chuck you out?

Guy Garvey20:40

For not attending college, I got uh yet another letter sent home saying I'd not been attending my lectures.

Guy Garvey20:46

And she booted me out the door.

Guy Garvey20:48

I think she thought I'd come back that night and apologise, and I stubbornly didn't.

Presenter20:53

He went to the party squad.

Guy Garvey20:54

Oh, it's the party's quite well, yeah, had a great time.

Presenter20:56

Right, Guy Garvey, we're going to have some more music now. Very much a change of gear. This, tell me about this.

Guy Garvey21:02

I was out with my big group of friends on a camping holiday when I was about twenty two.

Guy Garvey21:08

An a

Guy Garvey21:09

I went wandering off into the trees because my ex-girlfriend was among the party and I was finding it difficult to be around her because I was still in love with her.

Guy Garvey21:17

So I went wandering off through the trees and got lost and ended up half way up the side of a mountain, thinking I was heading back to the campsite and I was half way up this mountain.

Guy Garvey21:27

And I thought why not finish walking up it and have a look. And as I got to the top this was on the compilation that my sister Becky had made for me. The Lonely Shepherdess, it's um from the uh Chant d'Auvergne. It's the Bailero, did we decide it was pronounced? I think it's Bailero. Yeah, which is kind of French hay nonni noni.

Presenter22:38

That was by Lero from Chant Auvergne by Contadoup, sung there by Arlene Auger with the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Jan Pascal Tortellier. And for you, lyric alert, are you always sort of ch chasing a lyric in the same way that, you know, a stand-up will always be chasing a line, that somehow, wherever they are, whatever they're doing, there's a bit of them that really ultimately is engaged in wh in whether or not there'll be a gag. Is there a bit of you that's engaged in whether or not there's a lyric in it?

Guy Garvey23:03

Yes, at all times, yeah. I got something on the way to the toilet here earlier on about Sasquatch.

Presenter23:09

So it's Sasquatch of course been Yeti.

Guy Garvey23:11

Yes, I caught myself in a reflection in exactly that Sasquatch pose.

Presenter23:15

Right.

Guy Garvey23:15

So, caught myself all Sasquatch, blah, blah, blah. It'll get it in there somewhere.

Presenter23:20

I'm glad that you brought up the Yeti thing, because when I was thinking of how I would introduce you, I thought about a sort of

Presenter23:26

Poetic gorilla. I was going to use that, and then I thought, well, maybe you'd be horribly offended by that, but maybe I'm not the first one to do that. Is it because you've got that silverback thing going on physically? Yeah.

Guy Garvey23:34

Physically, yes. I've heard worse. Yeah, I get things like those. I meant it as a compliment, actually. I like gorillas. Oh, thank you. I'll take the gorilla. I'll take it.

Presenter23:37

I meant it as a compliment actually. I like gambling.

Presenter23:41

I'll take it. Time for some more music, Guy. This is your sixth. Tell me about your sixth.

Guy Garvey23:47

Jolie Holland, this is very much a homegrown bedroom record called Catalpa and she's taken a WB Yeats poem and she set it to music. For personal reasons, I really connect with this poem as well. It's a spontaneously occurring story about fish turning into women and that's I think I suspect has happened in all cultures for all time. Anyway, W B Yeats.

Presenter24:10

Yeah.

Presenter24:12

Why are you laughing, what about spontaneously cutting fishy women?

Guy Garvey24:16

Okay, so me and my friend Ed, when I was about sixteen, decided to sit down and uh record a story on a tape set. Ed was a keen fisherman, and we wrote this very romantic story about a guy fishing who

Guy Garvey24:33

Hooks a carp and it turns into a beautiful girl that he falls in love with, but then she slips away from him, she slips back into the water at the end of the story. Carp woman, we called it. It could have been.

Guy Garvey24:45

It could have had a better title, but I am in a band called Elbow. And Wandering Angus is pretty much the same thing. He hooks a girl in the form of a trout and she runs off, and he spends the rest of the time. Of course, his is much better than ours. And I love the line as well. I'm gonna paraphrase badly now. And pluck till time and times are done.

Guy Garvey25:05

The silver apples of the moon and the golden apples of the sun-that's just beautiful, isn't it?

Presenter25:10

This

Guy Garvey25:17

Uh

Presenter25:17

I went out. To the haze.

Presenter25:21

Yeah.

Presenter25:23

Because a fire was in my head.

Guy Garvey25:31

I cut and peeled a hazel wand.

Presenter25:38

That was Jordie Holland and Wandering Angus, and and you were talking to me, Guy Garvey, during that about the the idea of the Muse. You were saying that you subscribe to that idea, that actually you feel you write better when you have a Muse.

Guy Garvey25:50

It's certain kinds of songs, yeah.

Presenter25:51

Yeah.

Guy Garvey25:51

I mean

Guy Garvey25:53

Personal experience is the easiest way or the easiest place to write from.

Guy Garvey25:57

But if you want to stretch yourself and if you want to do something that that uses your imagination in a different way than just finding the language and finding the the poetry or the musicality of your words, then yeah, to have a muse is a great thing.

Presenter26:10

And is it that unrequited aspect of it that helps to propel the creativity?

Guy Garvey26:14

Yeah, because you don't have the boundaries of your experience of that person. You have enough to go on that you can imagine them reacting to anything that you come up with, but you can take them wherever you want. We we have a song called An Imagined Affair. I wasn't planning on revealing that the whole thing was imagined in that song. If you were to read the lyrics off the page, it reads like a a real thing that happened. And then just in the last verse, I admit that actually I imagined this whole thing, it never happened, and I'm drunk in a bar.

Guy Garvey26:44

But I really enjoyed that little tour of my imagination. But you need somebody in your mind.

Presenter26:48

When you write the opposite situation, when you write for somebody that you are in a relationship with or you've had a liaison with, do you show them the the song? Maybe this is just my fantasy, but I imagine a lot of women have the fantasy that a man is going to write a beautiful song for them.

Guy Garvey27:03

If it's somebody that I'm involved with at the time of my writing it, then I like to finish it before I play it to them.

Presenter27:08

Right.

Guy Garvey27:09

Like, yes, I have gifted people songs.

Presenter27:11

Right. If you get a reaction that's not the reaction you want, you junk the song and you say, Too bad it's going on the album anyway.

Guy Garvey27:17

You don't tell the person that it's about them, so if it doesn't connect with them.

Presenter27:22

Oh.

Guy Garvey27:22

You've got your out.

Presenter27:24

What's the best reaction you've ever had?

Guy Garvey27:27

Oh, make em cry, make'em cry.

Presenter27:33

Uh let's have uh our next disc then.

Guy Garvey27:35

Tom Waits is another of those artists that exists in his own space, uh and more and more as the years go on, as he gets more and more experimental and less and less self conscious. But this is a return to very simple classic songwriting for him. It's really simple and it's really beautiful, and I understand now that

Guy Garvey27:55

As a songwriter, once you've been doing it for twenty years, you're keen to establish what it is you do that other songwriters don't. And that means falling into the same patterns. It's like guitarists eventually get rid of all the pedals and just have a really simple set up.

Presenter28:09

So it's sort of like a sense of abstraction. It's like a painter knowing that actually it's all of those choices of what they have left off the canvas that makes them what they're what's their importance.

Guy Garvey28:17

Absolutely. And and sort of I think this is it's got everything a Tom Wait song should have. It's got his grizzle, it's got his heart. And the middle eight lyric, I'm gonna love you till the wheels come off has so many connotations. I I absolutely adore it.

Speaker 228:35

Sun, come up.

Speaker 228:38

It was blue and

Speaker 228:44

Sun come up

Speaker 228:46

It was blue and gold.

Speaker 228:52

Some come up it was

Speaker 228:59

Ever since I put your picture in frame

Presenter29:07

That was Tom Waitson picture in a frame. So, Guy Garvey, you spent quite a lot of time in recent years in New York, round about the same time as you were about to turn forty, and I'm wondering if the two things were related.

Guy Garvey29:17

Maybe, yeah. Probably more related to um my changing circumstances with Emma. Me and my long term partner, Split Up last year, um, sort of coming out the back end of that relationship was like, run away, run away and um

Guy Garvey29:32

Also, there's a romance to the situation, being quite anonymous in America, w we don't do as well over there as we do in Europe.

Guy Garvey29:40

So I could sit in the corner of bars and

Guy Garvey29:43

uh eavesdrop again. I could listen to conversations around me and and also meet people simply on my own merits like a you know, like I used to in this country.

Presenter29:52

Was there a freshness to it? I mean, you used to sit with um, you know, the sort of Bob Dylan cap on in the corner of a cafe and write all those years ago before you were successful. Was there a feeling that you were almost reconnecting with that experience?

Guy Garvey29:59

Yeah.

Presenter30:03

Uh

Guy Garvey30:03

Yeah, absolutely. And sort of in in those terms, sort of forty hasn't hasn't been that scary, it's b I I'm quite a romantically quite drawn to it.

Guy Garvey30:14

Yeah, I think I'm really, really going to enjoy the next forty years.

Presenter30:18

What did you learn about yourself, then? Did you learn anything?

Guy Garvey30:21

Will you just see yourself from the outside a bit more? I'm not the lead singer of the band out there, I'm not a radio presenter, I'm I'm a polite Englishman in uh well, in cafes and bars by and large inhabited by younger people.

Guy Garvey30:34

So I was watching.

Guy Garvey30:35

the waitress who's a photographer, flirting with the waiter who's a sculptor, you know, both trying to get their thing off the floor. I was spotting and making parallels with the crew at night and day in Manchester Roadhouse that I came up with, all of whom have gone on to do these things, you know.

Guy Garvey30:53

And sort of thinking, God, yeah, I remember that, that was amazing, you know, that part of your life. I'm not much for looking back in any other way than wasn't that great.

Presenter31:01

Right.

Guy Garvey31:01

You know, I don't regret any of my decisions, which is w quite a thing to be able to say at forty, I don't regret any of my decisions.

Presenter31:09

What was it like playing in the closing ceremony of the London Olympics 2012? That must have been quite an atmosphere.

Guy Garvey31:14

It was, it was amazing. We were told it was a dry backstage until tangible. No booze. No booze, yeah. And I was like.

Presenter31:18

No bugs.

Guy Garvey31:21

All right, who's saying that? Who's they? And they were like, Well, the people producing the closing ceremony. I was like, Yes, who are they? What gives them the authority? I got really stroppy, which is not like me. So I ended up smuggling in a case of Guinness, a case of lager, a load of spirits.

Presenter31:37

How did you smuggle it? And I'm just interested in the legit

Guy Garvey31:39

Just thinks of that. I don't want to get anyone in trouble, but in Madness's flight cases.

Guy Garvey31:47

Them boys are great. I'm sure they wouldn't have minded. In fact, they partook, so there you go. But then it was amazing. Word got round that Elbow had the booze and we had the great and the good from British. Who did you have knocking at your door? Brian May knocked on for a beer. And Timothy Spall was my favourite. Me and Tim Spall now are really good buddies. I had a great night with him. And you know, he had like Kate Moss coming up to him and all these wonderful, beautiful models, sort of and he was still dressed as Churchill and we were well sozzled. And the following day on the train, on the way home, I I thought, I really like him. I I really hope I get to speak to him again and and then I thought everybody in the country loves Timothy Spall, you know. And then I got home and I got a phone call from him anyway.

Presenter31:51

Right.

Guy Garvey32:32

Guy, old boy, I have to say, it feels like I've known you for a hundred years and I was like, Yeah

Guy Garvey32:37

That's my last in memory of the Olympic closing ceremony.

Presenter32:40

You've said that you and you certainly seem to be you know, a place of transition in your life and a good place in your life. Obviously, the success is there. You're a single man. The world is your oyster. What do you imagine, say, for the next ten years? What w if I was talking to you when you're fifty? Where would you like to be in your life?

Guy Garvey32:57

I don't know. I'm I'm gonna concentrate on work. I'm happiest when I'm working. So I'm thinking about writing a book just to see if I can do it. I've realized that trying things and failing at them quite spectacularly publicly, I'm actually quite drawn to it in a twisted way. So I'm just gonna try stuff. And if somebody comes into my life that changes the rules and knocks me on the head, then brilliant. But I'm really enjoying being single. I'm really enjoying

Guy Garvey33:25

having uh my freedom and my time to myself.

Presenter33:28

Let's have your final track, Guy Garvey. What are we gonna hear?

Guy Garvey33:31

This is Jonah's Policewoman. The song's called Real Life. It's exquisite. It's one for Emma Jane who thus far is the love of my life and it reminds me of the best part of that relationship. It reminds me that for every romantic notion there are ten practical things to take into account and that's what actually makes up life and and relationships.

Presenter33:54

Yeah.

Speaker 333:54

Uh Food

Presenter33:56

Is my

Presenter34:00

Then I close the door.

Presenter34:05

Waiting lines so I can wait some more.

Presenter34:18

And it's true what they say about

Presenter34:24

That was Jonah's Policewoman and Real Life. So, Guy Garvey, I'm gonna give you some books now. You get to take the Bible.

Presenter34:29

And the complete works of Shakspeare to the Island, and one other book too, what will it be?

Guy Garvey34:34

I wonder if there's a complete J. D. Salinger. Can I have it, if there is?

Presenter34:38

If there isn't, if you had to pick one.

Guy Garvey34:40

If you had to pick one. It'd have to be Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters. That's my favorite companion of his short stories.

Presenter34:48

Okay, if it exists, the complete works, you can have it. If it doesn't, you can have that single one. And a luxury item, too. What will that be?

Guy Garvey34:54

See, I'm torn here between a radio and a case of scotch.

Presenter34:58

Well, it it's an easy choice because I wouldn't

Guy Garvey34:59

Give you the radio. And we're not allowed a radio. How did I miss that? How are you just being cruel today? You're allowed eight discs. That's the listening tissue. Right, I see.

Presenter35:05

Yeah.

Presenter35:07

That's the listing it's usually.

Presenter35:09

Is the Scotch, is it?

Guy Garvey35:11

I say Scotch, it's Irish whiskey actually. I know, I'm sorry.

Presenter35:13

Please

Presenter35:14

Now I'm gonna get tough with you.

Presenter35:17

No, what is it? Which one?

Guy Garvey35:18

Just a nice, simple, basic one like bush mills.

Presenter35:21

Right, lovely healthy.

Guy Garvey35:21

Yeah.

Presenter35:22

You could have an endless supply if you want.

Guy Garvey35:23

Colour?

Presenter35:24

Yeah.

Guy Garvey35:25

What about ice? Could I have ice as well?

Presenter35:27

Boe.

Guy Garvey35:27

Uh

Presenter35:27

I think you can.

Guy Garvey35:28

Oh, I love it. Right.

Presenter35:29

If you're going to learn a good whiskey,

Guy Garvey35:30

Yeah.

Presenter35:32

Uh

Presenter35:33

Which one of these eight would you pick if you were to save one from the waves? Which one would it be?

Guy Garvey35:38

I think it'd be talk talk, it'd be new grass.

Presenter35:41

Okay, it's yours. Guy Garvey, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you.

Guy Garvey35:45

Yeah.

Presenter35:46

Uh

Guy Garvey35:46

Uh

Presenter35:46

Mm-hmm.

Presenter36:27

You've been listening to a download from the BBC.

Presenter36:30

You'll find more information on the Radio Four website bbc.co.uk slash Radio4.