Was it always going to be a life in music for you?

I think I dreamed about that for the first time.

11 or 12 years of my life, 13 probably, I thought I'd love to be a pop star, but it just didn't happen to people like me.

You know, you had to be a good musician or a good singer or good looking.

And I was none of them when I was a kid, you know what I mean? So it was like, it was punk that really opened my eyes and proved to me, showed me that I was the kind of kid that, could be in one of these bands and make that sort of music so yeah that was i dreamed i remember being a kid and just wanting to be elvis presley that's like i just wanted to be elvis that was it and um it was uh yeah it was just a real awakening seeing the punk the old punk movement and that was like when i thought yeah i can do this you know what i mean yeah did you have a punk band Not really, no.

I mean, we had imaginary bands at art college.

We had all the names and everything.

What can you tell us about the album?

When Graham first asked you to record The Inspirals, what did you hear in the band? I

heard punk.

I was still...

Punk, as we know it, didn't really last a long time in terms of the sonics of it.

It soon became New Wave and New Romantic and everything else that followed it.

But the feelings that I got from punk, you know, the mindset, the DIY ethic...

That stayed with me for years.

What was happening in that room that night?

Yeah.

How does a microphone work? And so I started just...

being around the band scene in Oldham, driving bands about, recording bands onto my cassette player and doing all that kind of stuff.

And eventually I set up my own little rehearsal studio in a town called Ashen Underline, just outside Manchester.

So it's a rehearsal, a couple of rooms for rehearsing and then a little recording studio as well, just a four track, very basic four track cassette based system.

So bands started coming to me for demo tapes then.

Right.

yeah

Is there one track that has taken on a completely different meaning from when it originally came out?

Probably.

I'm guessing, I think This Is How It Feels is probably the big one, because that was, like when you write a song, we weren't big at the time, that was 89, I think I wrote that in 89, and we weren't a big band.

You're not even sure if the song you're writing is going to be a record, you know what I mean? But it became a record, we put it out as a single, and it went on and had its own life, which has opened a lot of doors for us.

And it's funny because you get to a point where your song, when it's out there, you can't really control it anymore.

You still get the royalties of it, obviously.

And you can stop political parties using it if you want.

What would you say is the weirdest festival experience you guys have ever had? Try and keep it PG.

So w- what, I mean, d- what, what is it about the pl- what is it about the place that makes it or made it, um, so kind of vibrant at that time, do you think?

I think I'd have to start by saying the people.

You know, pe- I get asked a lot why, why Manchester's the way it is.

It's, you know ...

Uh, y- the, the people are quite outstanding.

I think we're, we're a very warm community of people up here.

Um, so when somebody does come along with a crazy idea like having a band called Buzzcocks and making quirky, quirky pop songs that are rough around the edges, everybody bought into it.

Okay.

Talk us through that.

Yes, I was just constantly working with bands.

I had a day job, obviously, working in the furniture factory.

I was in charge of the assembly and packaging department.

and the transport and distribution.

So I was a company director, but I was still working day to day.

But alongside that, I was letting bands in at night to rehearse and recording bands over the weekends.

How's

Do you go out to write a hit song or do they just come to you?

They come to us in the ether.

Yeah.

I don't know, it's funny, isn't it? You just get inspired in different ways, really.

That started off as a trip to London, a DJ trip to London, where I just found myself dragging a massive bag about again.

Simple as that.

And singing some weird B&B, and that song came out of that experience, so it's nice to be back here

how does all that how does all that feel where does it all come from you know as have these been songs been queuing up at the ethereal door and banging on and until you finally let them in what's been going on guys