Pod Insights THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST EP.243 - KATE MOSSMAN About this episode Adam talks with British journalist and author Kate Mossman about her book Men Of A Certain Age, in which she details encounters with elder statesmen of Rock. Kate tells Adam about meeting Kiss, Ray Davies and Kevin Ayers, her deep-level Queen issues, and the extent to which the relationship between father and daughter informs her feelings about some of her older male musical idols. And Adam recounts a recent encounter with a musical hero that was so nearly a dream come true… but ended in abject humiliation.
Conversation recorded face-to-face in London on March 11th, 2025
Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and conversation editing.
Podcast illustration by Helen Green https://helengreenillustration.com/
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Transcript 15,312 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin. Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening. I took my microphone and found some human folk. Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke. My name is Adam Buckston, I'm a man. I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan.
0:31 Adam Buxton? Hey, how are you doing, podcats? It's Adam Buckston here. I'm back where I belong, on my Norfolk farm track. And I'm here with my best dog friend, Rosie Buckston. Half whippet, half poodle, all genius. Isn't that true, doglegs?
0:52 Speaker 00 Don't patronise me.
0:54 Adam Buxton? I apologise. May I say though, Rose, without patronising you, that you are looking so beautiful. Rosie had quite a radical trim the other day. While I was in London, in fact, it happened. And I called my wife, asked how Rosie was doing. She said, I don't know if you're going to be pleased. The dog groomer gave her quite an extreme makeover. She said she doesn't really look like Rosie anymore. I was quite nervous. But I think it was just that moment after you get a very extreme haircut when you're still getting used to it. And you think, oh, maybe that was a mistake. But then usually you hit the sweet spot a week or two afterwards. It starts to grow out a bit and you get used to the look.
1:39 Adam Buxton? And that's where we're at with Rosie. And I just think she's looking wonderful. She was getting a bit shaggy before. Anyway, now she's looking sleek and more whipperty. And would it be okay to say plush?
1:54 Speaker 00 Too late now, isn't it?
1:55 Adam Buxton? Oh, Rosie, so soft and strokey.
2:03 Adam Buxton? How are you doing anyway, podcasts? I hope you're very well. I'm doing alright, thank you. I'm about two thirds of the way through recording my audiobook. Should be finished next week. Gonna see Joe Cornish. He's gonna come by and record some bonus waffle. The audiobook is gonna be out with the physical copy next month, May the 22nd. And there is a link in the description of today's podcast for you to pre-order, including the chance for you to pre-order from a local independent bookshop in Norwich. The Book Hive. And if you order through them, then you have the option to get a signed copy. You can specify the message you want me to write in it as well. As long as it's not offensively insane or too long.
2:49 Adam Buxton? Let's go through here, Rosie. Oh. It's a little bit Bramley Hedge.
2:56 Adam Buxton? You alright there? Come through. There you go. Alright, cool. Now we're on the side of a nice field. And we're avoiding the bird cannon, so all is good. Okay, let me tell you a bit about podcast number 243. This one features a rambling conversation with British journalist and author Kate Mossman. Now, I first came across Kate's writing on music in the 2000s. And she was the reviews editor for The Word. That was a music and culture magazine run essentially by former Old Gray Whistle Test presenters David Hepworth and Mark Allen.
3:37 Adam Buxton? I remember in those days being struck by how passionate and positive The Word magazine was compared to some other music magazines that were around at the time. And I really appreciated the fact that The Word seemed, to me at least, to be interested in more kind of thoughtful celebrations of things that its writers were into. They didn't do much stuff at all on things they thought were totally shit. Shortly after joining the staff of The Word in 2008, Kate Mossman wrote a piece that I really loved. It was about going out to rural France to interview British musician Kevin Ayers, who I was a fan of.
4:19 Adam Buxton? He was one of the founders of the band Soft Machine with Robert Wyatt, former housemate of Brian Eno. Anyway, when Kate went out to France to meet him... He was at a point in his life when he wasn't doing especially well. And the piece she wrote struck me as being really nicely written, but also unusually tender and empathetic. So afterwards, I always looked out for Kate's writing. In twenty twelve, she became the arts editor at the British political and cultural news magazine, The New Statesman, where she wrote profiles of acts like Kiss, Ray Davies and Jon Bon Jovi.
5:00 Adam Buxton? Kate is now the New Statesman's main profile writer, working across the arts and politics. But her writing also appears in The Guardian, The Observer and The Times. She also pops up on radios four and two from time to time. And in several documentaries for Sky Arts and the BBC over the years, she did an hour-long documentary for BBC Four in twenty fifteen called When Pop Ruled My Life, in which, with help from artists and other music nerds like herself, she explored the mysterious forces at play in the relationship between fans and the objects of their obsessions. In Kate's case, that was the band Queen.
5:43 Adam Buxton? Kate also fronted the following year, twenty sixteen, a great doc about the experience of women rock stars called Girl in a Band, in which she spoke to, among others, Tina Waymoth of Talking Heads, Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, Viv Albertine of The Slits and friend of the podcast, Miki Bereney of Lush. But it's Kate's encounters with the elder statesmen of rock that she's written about for her first book, Men of a Certain Age, titled, as you will hear in our conversation, before MasterChef presenter Greg Wallace dismissed complaints of inappropriate behaviour made against him as being from, quotes,
6:28 Adam Buxton? "a handful of middle-class women of a certain age." Ah, that was the big story back in December twenty twenty four. Remember those days? It was a simpler time. Men of a Certain Age contains interviews with Kate's Queen idols, Brian May and Roger Taylor, and also features her encounters with, among others, Wilco Johnson, Nick Cave, Sting, Jeff Beck, and Sannanda Maitreya, formerly known as Terrence Trent Darby. That piece, written for the New Statesman in twenty fifteen, turned out to be the first of Kate's pieces to go viral in the social media age. Or at least, that was the first time she knew
7:11 Adam Buxton? that a piece she was writing was going to go viral, because people were fascinated with the idea of Terrence Trent Darby having rebranded himself so completely. The second time that Kate knew a piece she was writing was going to go viral was in twenty twenty one, when she interviewed a man who was not himself a musician, but had had his life transformed after being immortalised in song by a female legend of music. Who was it? I'm not telling you. It's a tease. You'll find out in my conversation with Kate, which was recorded face to face in London in March of this year, twenty twenty five. And as well as talking about some of the rock royalty
7:55 Adam Buxton? in Men of a Certain Age, we discussed her Queen issues. And we talked about the extent to which the relationship between father and daughter informs Kate's feelings about some of her older male musical idols. I really loved the book, in case that isn't clear. We'd highly recommend it. And it was great to be able to talk with Kate, who is so articulate about two of my favourite subjects: music and parents. I'll be back at the end for a bit more waffle, but right now, with Kate Mossman, here we go.
9:10 Adam Buxton? This is your first book?
9:11 Speaker 02 My first book, yes.
9:12 Adam Buxton? Wow, congratulations.
9:13 Speaker 02 Yeah, it was quite fun. I just wrote it over about seven months of Friday mornings, for some reason. And I didn't really edit any of it. I just kind of poured it out and then went home. And then the next Friday, I'd sit down and pour a bit more out and went home.
9:28 Adam Buxton? Oh, I wish I could have done that. All I poured out was like pouring out one sentence at a time.
9:35 Speaker 02 And what is your book?
9:36 Adam Buxton? It's a, another memoir. It's called I Love You Bye. Both my book titles, the first one was called Ramble Book, have been suggested by my comedy wife, Jo Cornish. He's got a good instinct for a grabby title. If it was left down to me, I think I wanted to call my first book Tangents.
9:56 Speaker 02 Tangents. Oh, yeah, that's quite abstract, isn't it? Yes.
9:59 Adam Buxton? So he laughed at that and said, no, call it Ramble Book, mate.
10:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. I was lying on the floor outside my daughter's room. She takes about an hour and a half to go to bed. And suddenly, men of a certain age came to mind for my book. And I knew it was the right one, because it was actually before the Greg Wallace thing. But I'd always hated that phrase, women of a certain age. I still couldn't believe when I'd hear people say it in the kind of, you know, the 21st century. And I thought, it doesn't often get flipped around. So, so that sort of felt right. But it was also a little bit too literary at first for a rock book, people thought. But they've got used to it now.
10:34 Adam Buxton? Oh, it's good. And also, it got that great Wallace boost.
10:37 Speaker 02 Exactly. I have a lot to thank him for. Yeah.
10:41 Adam Buxton? When did you realise that you were going to compile just interviews with blokes?
10:47 Speaker 02 Well, it was sort of a source of embarrassment throughout my entire career that I was drawn to. The older male rock star. I didn't really notice it at first, but then when I started working at the New Statesman, it became a running joke because obviously that's a politics magazine and why was I trying to do Jon Bon Jovi in it and stuff. So I was allowed the the free rein, but always with a bit of a dig. And so over time, I I realised that there was something going on rather powerful with my unconscious about these figures. And I guess I've got to a point in life now where I thought maybe I should look at that and maybe I should accept that there was a bit of a sort of strange pull towards this figure. There are other musicians out there and there are female musicians
11:29 Speaker 02 out there, but I wasn't really interested in interviewing them. I always wanted to do the old guys, so.
11:34 Adam Buxton? When did your writing career start?
11:36 Speaker 02 Um, two thousand and seven, after a sort of pilgrimage to go and find Glen Campbell in Malibu, who was at that point not a kind of, you know, granite hewn face of country music. He was completely down the dumper and he was in his early sixties and he was doing a gig with Jimmy Webb, who wrote Witcher, Lineman and all those songs. And I just decided to go on my own.
11:57 Adam Buxton? How old were you then?
11:58 Speaker 02 Twenty six. And I was working at a children's charity and somebody said to me, you can't do that trip unless you write about it, because it was five thousand miles, it was self-funded, I didn't have a car, and I wasn't even going to meet him or anything. I just needed to be in the same square mile. And I actually started to write then, wrote a little piece on that, sent it around the old music magazines, you know, you could go into Borders and open them up and get the the addresses of an editor, or even call an editor, which was amazing. They might pick the phone up. So it started back then.
12:30 Adam Buxton? So were you totally obsessed with Glen Campbell?
12:33 Speaker 02 Completely.
12:34 Adam Buxton? From what age?
12:35 Speaker 02 From, well, it was weird. He was the second big music obsession, because Queen was the first, but Glen Glen Campbell kind of came in when I was a student and and then really gripped me in my mid twenties. And I can't really explain why, but it's something about a a deep sense of peace and calm that comes over my entire body whenever I hear his music. So it was almost like a physical thing. Not that much interest in his personality. His jokes were pretty bad. He had the classic sort of country music, wild whiskey and coke, as in cocaine kind of fuelled lifestyle. I wasn't that interested in that, but it was something about his ability to take a song, because he didn't write any songs, and like do the ultimate cover version of it. Lightness of touch, speed it up, like
13:18 Speaker 02 a fairy just dancing through the music. And that's what I hear in all his music.
13:22 Adam Buxton? He didn't do the original version of Rhinestone Cowboy.
13:24 Speaker 02 No, he just, he just had a great ear for driving along, presumably in a freeway in LA, when he's working for Capital, and putting the radio on and then hearing something like Gentle On My Mind or Rhinestone Cowboy and thinking, oh, that's a hit for me. And then he would take it and it, it would be a hit for him when it hadn't necessarily been for the previous person.
13:43 Adam Buxton? Who did the first version of Wichita Lineman then?
13:45 Speaker 02 That was for him.
13:46 Adam Buxton? Oh, that was for him.
13:47 Speaker 02 That was for him. So Jimmy Webb wrote that for him, as I, as I understand, when he'd just come out of being a session man in the, the Wrecking Crew and Webb's like, okay, this is one for you. So he, I think he recorded that in a couple of hours. So it was something about the appearance of effortlessness and the idea that he seemed to click into like a higher state or something when he was playing and singing that I just, I was drawn to. It's weird.
14:11 Adam Buxton? Wichita Lineman's quite a song.
14:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:13 Adam Buxton? My son has just learned how to play that on the guitar. He was playing it this morning as I left the house.
14:18 Speaker 02 Really?
14:18 Adam Buxton? Yeah, I was listening. I was thinking, oh, his voice is sounding nice. And I think, what's he singing? And yeah.
14:23 Speaker 02 So he was playing dee dee dee dee dee. He was doing the.
14:26 Adam Buxton? I didn't hear, no, he was strumming.
14:27 Speaker 02 He was actually doing acoustic version of it. Yeah. Yeah. It's beautiful. And it's too short as well, like a lot of the best songs. It should have another verse. It leaves you wanting more. It just fades out in like a really sixties way.
14:40 Adam Buxton? It's perfect. And so you go off to meet Glen Campbell, you write your piece about him. And was that a good experience though? Did you actually meet him?
14:49 Speaker 02 I met him, I, his, it was a strange era where his daughter, he had seven kids and his daughter was a kind of active figure on a Glen Campbell message forum in about 2006. And she was part time as an air hostess for Delta Airlines and she performed in his band. So it was this weird era before fan sites became corporate websites selling merch and stuff. And it was actually just a conversation between real people. And I emailed her directly and I said, I'm coming all the way from the UK to your dad's gig. Is there any way I could meet him? And she just said, I'll see what I can do. Um.
15:22 Adam Buxton? Did she say, how mentally balanced are you?
15:24 Speaker 02 Well, this was it. Yeah, this and and actually, when I did meet him, it was a very short exchange at the side of a stage in Pepperdine University. And she pulled me up to him and said, Dad, Kate's come all the way from London to meet you. And I just said, yeah, how bad is that? I just, and then I just like almost shouted, how bad is that? And it's something I was thinking about in the book as well, that there's, when you're a journalist, particularly when you're a music journalist, there's quite a lot of kind of shame bound up in the strength of your feelings for these people that you're following around and trying to show that you're a professional and you're getting the story. When in fact, your heart is just hammering in your rib cage and you just can't believe you've met your idol. It's very strange.
16:08 Adam Buxton? Yeah, well, it's a really interesting asymmetry, to use a podcast word. Did you ever used to say asymmetry about ten years ago?
16:18 Speaker 02 I did quite a lot.
16:19 Adam Buxton? Oh, did you?
16:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
16:20 Adam Buxton? Oh, there you go. You are on the asymmetry bus, early days. But it's a theme that runs through the book is that, well, it investigates the relationship between the fan and the rock star. But of course, it's a two-way thing. And one of the main motifs in the book, I suppose, is the relationship between a father and a daughter. You talk about your own relationship with your dad, and there is that element, that dynamic there in your relationship with some of these older rock stars. But of course, it's different because it's, you know, it's not a father and a daughter. It's a sexy old rock star.
16:59 Speaker 02 Yeah.
17:00 Adam Buxton? No sexy young woman.
17:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
17:01 Adam Buxton? Maybe there's a few sparks there. But were you aware of that dynamic when you were writing the pieces first time round?
17:09 Speaker 02 I think I relied on the dynamic without understanding what it was. So it was like a kind of weird glowing sense of recognition and affinity, which was probably all completely in my head. So you imagine the rock star, they bring to the sort of younger female journalists, they bring all their kind of associations with groupies and
17:29 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
17:29 Speaker 02 fans backstage and stuff. And I do Remember that there was kind of palpable relief on the faces of an old rocker when I turned up because they were used to being interviewed by men their own age.
17:41 Adam Buxton? Yeah, spotty guys.
17:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, who were trying to sort of show that their knowledge was like completely watertight about the band's back catalogue or or maybe like ask really shitty questions like, well, why did your second album fail and things like that. Whereas when they saw me, that something in them, it was like, oh, it's just a lady. It's okay. I can relax now. So I kind of picked up on that unconsciously. And it would make me maybe more playful and maybe bolder than I might be with an older woman who I really admired, like a Joni Mitchell. I I don't, I couldn't be playful with a Joni Mitchell in the same way because sort of the high priestess, you know, I'd be, I'd be terrified that she wouldn't like me, whereas I kind of assumed that these guys would on some weird
18:21 Speaker 02 level. And I think that goes on in all sorts of interview dynamics. I interviewed Lyn Barber recently and she always preferred the older man, younger woman dynamic. She loved that sense of sparring that was good natured, like a cheeky, clever young girl and a kind of dad figure telling them about the world, so.
18:42 Adam Buxton? And were you conscious, or maybe you just weren't that kind of person, were you conscious of the need not to flirt or to let it feel like flirting?
18:50 Speaker 02 Luckily, I wasn't that kind of person. I I went to a girls' school. I didn't know how to be around a man until I was about thirty, after lots of internet dating. I kind of assumed that if if any man showed an interest in me, I had to be their girlfriend. So that was like the first point. And that's what a lot of people who go to girls' schools feel. You've got to be grateful for any, any male attention. And I also didn't know how to show that I liked people, which is partly why I was drawn to the older man because they were sort of quote unquote safe. But of course, underneath that, there's all this stuff boiling away about father-daughter stuff and all this funny energy that is not really that. I mean, it's it's live, shall we say. It's not unsafe, but it's live.
19:33 Adam Buxton? But also, in a modern context, that relationship feels less safe, perhaps. And there are so many stories about predatory older men that we're familiar with now.
19:42 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:43 Adam Buxton? That it's hard not to think, oh, careful, young Kate.
19:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:47 Adam Buxton? You know, and my clumsy question about flirting, I suppose, was was more about like, were, did you ever feel unsafe? Did you ever feel like, oh, I've got to be careful here?
19:55 Speaker 02 I never felt unsafe, but I was thinking about my encounter with Kiss, which was, which was one of my, the most fun ever. Kiss got in touch and said they wanted to do a piece, which again is weird. Why with the new Statesman? But they're clever about their legacy like that. They thought it would be long and thoughtful. And I said, okay, well, I'd like to do it in Moscow, because I could see they were playing there. And this was just when Putin was starting to show his, his late stage. Things were really, there were protests about the treatment of gay people in Chechnya going on. There were literally, it was May Day that I went over there. And there were people being bundled into the back of vans for protesting against the um, treatment of gay people. And so it was, things were really starting to feel quite tense.
20:37 Speaker 02 And Kiss themselves were doing this big gig that was for kind of everybody who didn't want to hear the song of the vulgar boatman. And Kiss were fantastic, but they, I did notice this amazing transformation when they got into their fifty pound metal uniform, which put a foot on their height.
20:55 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
20:55 Speaker 02 So they were like these space clowns, kind of sailing down the corridor with these perfect white faces and the makeup kind of took twenty five years off them. And they became instantly flirtatious when they were in character. Whereas they were kind of gross, like, when they didn't have, I mean, Gene Simmons himself, like, described his appearances like a baby dog at birth at best. Without his, his clothes on. And then when they had it on, they were these kind of majestic figures. But Simmons had a really weird thing where he wouldn't use words. He just, he had this spiky kind of tortoise shell with all these points on it, and he would kind of push you
21:35 Speaker 02 against the wall a little bit too hard. And I remember the spikes digging into the back of my hand. And I just remember thinking it was on the border of being, a lot of women, particularly women younger than me, wouldn't, wouldn't tolerate that.
21:50 Adam Buxton? No.
21:50 Speaker 02 But I just thought, oh, that's great copy. I always just thought it's great copy.
21:54 Adam Buxton? Been assaulted by a. A space, what did you call it?
21:58 Speaker 02 A space clown.
21:59 Adam Buxton? A space clown.
22:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, very touchy feely, but I was never alone in a hotel room being given things by them. And I think that they were so careful by that point.
22:10 Adam Buxton? So on the whole, there's how many, there's nineteen pieces, I think, in the book? And more than that number of people that you've actually interviewed in those pieces. Before I ask you about the people who you liked most, who were some of the people you met that you were surprised by? Maybe people who you felt like, oh, this is pretty hard work.
22:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, let me think. Well, Ray Davis is hard work.
22:34 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
22:34 Speaker 02 But I I found it a great kind of hard work. He he asked me sixteen questions in the course of the interview. He kind of flipped it round. He has this kind of, I think he's described it before of a as a sort of eternal sense of a partness. He doesn't feel like an old rock star, even though he sort of talks like his songs are kind of the building blocks of culture because he he was always so kind of miserable and chippy and and sort of floated above everything and observed things that he he's kind of funny in a in an interview too. He's sort of slightly ghostly. And and he would say, so you'd just suddenly come out with questions like, um, is that guy from Depeche Mode gay? You know, or um, did your mother work?
23:20 Speaker 02 And it was quite disarming in a funny kind of way because you you sort of got sucked into what felt like a bit of a back and forth. And then at the end, he, I was looking down at my drink or something, and he said, I suddenly caught sight of you in fifty years' time. And I thought, what does that mean?
23:35 Adam Buxton? What does that mean?
23:36 Speaker 02 What does that mean? Like, do I look like a old woman? Or is he kind of being wistfully romantic? Because he, you know, talks about different eras as being to him, the fifties were black and white, the sixties were technicolor. He's quite photographic in the in the way that he he uses imagery. And so he was hard. I didn't feel that he liked me. I didn't feel the twinkliness with him.
23:59 Adam Buxton? Well, the chapter is called, You You Haven't Asked Me Any Questions Yet, or something like that, right?
24:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that was that was sort of slightly like, oh, God, this is failing, you know? But at the same time, I came away thinking he that I'd got enough of a strangeness about him for it to work.
24:14 Adam Buxton? Yeah, I mean, he's super complex, though. He's had some tough struggles, hasn't he, mentally, I think.
24:18 Speaker 02 Very much.
24:19 Adam Buxton? Been through a lot of depression and stuff.
24:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Horrible sort of repercussions from his sister's death when he was a teenager and and how he sort of self harmed when he was twelve or thirteen and stuff. And I think it all builds up to this. It's very it's hard to be kind of that comical about Ray Davison away because there is such a psychological apartness and complexity to it. And he was so, so important at sort of standing outside the sixties in a way that he wasn't saying they were all great, you know, that he's actually kind of almost a cynical view.
24:53 Adam Buxton? Oh, yeah, very much.
24:54 Speaker 02 Everything, yeah.
24:55 Adam Buxton? Dedicated follower of fashion is is a total takedown.
24:58 Speaker 02 Yes, yeah, yeah. The songs about the movement were not of the movement. They were sort of hovering above. And I've often thought that about the sixties. I I kind of, I don't, I don't wish I'd lived in the sixties because I would have hated the pretension.
25:09 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
25:09 Speaker 02 I hated the pretension of the nineties, you know.
25:11 Adam Buxton? Right. No, ex- exactly right, yeah. I think I would have been a total conservative bellend.
25:17 Speaker 02 Do you think so?
25:18 Adam Buxton? Yeah, big star.
25:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, the idea that everything, that fashion was so restricted, that, you know, girls had to wear miniskirts regardless of what they looked like in them. And they ironed their hair and everybody was like, this sense of of the pose of it all. I I don't, I've never lustered after that time. I lost more after the seventies for some reason, but I'm sure that was just as bad, but.
25:38 Adam Buxton? In the introduction of the book, you mention your impressions of the nineties when you were in your teens, right?
25:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:45 Adam Buxton? And you talk about nineties irony. Can I get you to read the the paragraph? Do you know the one I mean?
25:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:52 Adam Buxton? Um, I actually have it here. It's useful at the top there.
25:55 Speaker 02 Yeah. No one lucky enough to have come of age in a different decade can truly understand nineteen nineties irony and just how caustic it was. It is a taste, a smell that cannot be picked up in historical revision of the decade and has been largely erased from social history, an entire way of living that might be summed up in the face of Marc Lamar. In the nineties, the level of irony in conversation among the young was exhausting. This was not communication. It was an exchange of taught, self-vetted opinion predicated on the understanding that one was not to express genuine enthusiasm about anything, even if one clearly loved it. I don't know if that's familiar to you, but that was my overriding feeling of that decade.
26:37 Speaker 02 And it was a decade when I was trying to kind of come into myself, you know.
26:41 Adam Buxton? Yeah, I it is familiar. I mean, you sum it up really brilliantly. And much as Mark Lamar is a well-loved and respected figure in the comedy world, I certainly had that relationship with him as a celebrity figure. I, I, you know, I kind of hated the word.
27:01 Speaker 02 Never mind the Buzzcocks, he was so mean on, wasn't he?
27:03 Adam Buxton? I was on Nevermind the Buzzcocks and he tore me a new one. And he was just scrupulously charmless on that show and he just thought I was a prick.
27:11 Speaker 02 But I don't think the TV audience liked what he was doing.
27:13 Adam Buxton? I mean, I didn't as a viewer, I didn't like that atmosphere in those shows, that kind of gladiatorial atmosphere. But he's a funny one though, Mark Lamar, just to, while we're on the subject, because he did a great music show. Did you ever watch that? Like it was a, it was a really good. Um, can't remember what it was called. It was short-lived.
27:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
27:36 Adam Buxton? But it was like a kind of a cultural roundup thing, a little bit like The Late Show or something.
27:41 Speaker 02 Maybe he became pushed into a certain role, but I think there was so much of that going on in that, in that decade anyway. And the way it's sort of looked back on is the Ladette culture, Cool Britannia, that it was all very kind of gung ho and, and vindaloo vindaloo. But I think they're missing something else, which was certainly, uh, you can see it on the old Top of the Pops Friday night things. This sneering inability to like.
28:07 Speaker 02 Stand up for anything you cared about. Everything was ironic and and the dominant musical culture in retrospect was so kind of brash and and bold, but everybody to me in the Britpop bands seemed to be so kind of over it. And I I I really, I suppose I envied people who could really get behind those bands and feel that they were part of that tribe and feel that Damon was speaking to them. Because to me, I just, I just found it like scary and repellent. It was very weird.
28:36 Adam Buxton? A lot of those Britpop bands felt co-opted against their will.
28:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:40 Adam Buxton? And they all, like, none of them said, oh, yeah, Britpop, it's great. I'm so proud
28:44 Speaker 02 No, exactly.
28:45 Adam Buxton? Member. They were all like, oh, Britpop, it's shit. I'm not Britpop.
28:47 Speaker 02 Exactly. They were being forced into something against their will. So.
28:50 Adam Buxton? Yeah. So what were you into in those days? Was that was that your Queen days?
28:54 Speaker 02 I was just into Queen and and I don't, I don't say this with um, great pride, but I lost about seven years of my life to Queen.
29:02 Adam Buxton? I mean, there's worse things to be into.
29:04 Speaker 02 There's a lot to to get into there. Lots of albums.
29:06 Adam Buxton? It's pretty great. I I I mean, I absolutely loved Queen. I didn't sort of stick with it. And I didn't get into the albums, but I got the greatest hits.
29:16 Speaker 02 Yeah.
29:17 Adam Buxton? Very early on.
29:17 Speaker 02 There's a lot of hits.
29:18 Adam Buxton? Presumably you owned the records back in the day, though.
29:20 Speaker 02 I owned the tapes.
29:21 Adam Buxton? Ah, yeah, I was a tape person as well.
29:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, greatest hits one and two.
29:26 Adam Buxton? I'm trying to do the Dolby noise.
29:31 Adam Buxton? Um, tapes, yeah, of course. Why would you have anything else?
29:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, but but much, much harder to to fast forward through the awkward songs when you're trying to not let your dad hear because you don't think he'll like this one.
29:42 Adam Buxton? I think that actually the cassette format encouraged a deeper commitment to whatever you were listening, because it was a pain in the arse to fast forward.
29:51 Speaker 02 It was a pain in the arse and there was also a risk of breaking.
29:53 Adam Buxton? Right.
29:54 Speaker 02 After repeated use. So, yeah, you did, you did just have to tolerate it and maybe think about something else during Radio Gaga.
30:00 Adam Buxton? Did you do repair jobs on your broken cassettes?
30:02 Speaker 02 I I think we did. I think we did. But then we also went to a lot of car boot sales in North Norfolk in the nineties and we'd be able to replace them quite easily as well. So, yeah, there was, there was a lot of, I mean, it says a lot about Queen at the time. There were lots of tapes from Queen in car boot sales at that point. It was like a a s- a secret obsession. Nobody talked about it. But over time, it's come out of the woodwork. There are a lot of people exactly of of my generation who were obsessed with that band, but in a secret way.
30:29 Adam Buxton? Yes, you must have seen Reese Thomas's brilliant.
30:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
30:33 Adam Buxton? Documentary about him.
30:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
30:34 Adam Buxton? I used to bump into Reese in the olden nineties. Actually, no, it was after that. It was early two thousands. Cause he's a bit younger, but it's so good that uh thing that he put together and evidently he got access, incredible access to their archive.
30:47 Speaker 02 He did, and I think that started their big revival. I mean, they're they're obviously when they started the Ben Elton musical, that was when they were back in the in the West End, but they it was really part of the story that led up to that terrible Bohemian Rhapsody film and people suddenly saying that they're national treasures and that they're wonderful and Roger Taylor turning up on Jules Holland, which I mean, that just would never have happened. It's kind of amazing.
31:07 Adam Buxton? Why didn't you like the film? I didn't think the film was so bad.
31:09 Speaker 02 Oh, I think it was just I couldn't watch anyone play them.
31:12 Adam Buxton? Okay.
31:13 Speaker 02 And but I had other objections to it, like I I couldn't believe some of the creative tweaking they'd done with the storyline, like the idea that Freddie had to like beg for his job back just before Live Aid because he'd sort of disgraced himself with his wild lifestyle. I mean, that never happened. And I thought, this is your beloved bandmate and you're the executive producers. Why are you writing this guy? Like this lonely kind of party animal who's desperate to get back in the band. He never left the band. Unless, you know, something I don't know, but I I thought it was very odd to do that.
31:45 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
31:46 Speaker 02 Kind of power play, you know.
31:47 Adam Buxton? You've never met Freddie? No, he died.
31:49 Speaker 02 No, and I don't know anybody who did.
31:51 Adam Buxton? Uh huh.
31:51 Speaker 02 In in my music journalism world, and that's fascinating to me because they met everybody.
31:57 Adam Buxton? Mm hmm.
31:57 Speaker 02 But that says a lot about that band and how they protected themselves. So Dave Hepworth and Mark Allen never met him.
32:03 Adam Buxton? These are your ex Word colleagues?
32:04 Speaker 02 My ex colleagues at Word, yeah, and they met everyone. I mean, they did Live Aid, you know. I mean, maybe they're in a room with him, but there weren't interviews.
32:12 Adam Buxton? And you haven't met other journalists who interviewed him?
32:13 Speaker 02 No, I don't. I think maybe David Quantic did.
32:16 Adam Buxton? Oh, yeah.
32:17 Speaker 02 Years ago, but every time Queen did an interview, they brought up the fact they played Sun City.
32:22 Adam Buxton? In South Africa.
32:23 Speaker 02 In South Africa.
32:23 Adam Buxton? During the boycott.
32:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. And so that would be like a kind. Kind of moment of tension in the interview and then basically I think Freddie handed over most of the interviewing to Brian and Roger, so.
32:33 Adam Buxton? And did he never have a good response to that? Did he never stand up for himself or or try and explain what the decision was? Or was it just that they they knew basically they shouldn't have done it?
32:42 Speaker 02 I think they they say now that they regret it, but at the time they used to say, well, Elton John and Rod Stewart did it as well and no one's asking them about it. So there was a lot of them that played at a similar time, but for various reasons, it, I don't know, maybe the attitude of Queen, maybe it just looked very arrogant and and, I mean, very apolitical. They always claimed to be very apolitical.
33:05 Adam Buxton? I loved the description of you in the car with your parents and saying that for literally seven years, the only thing they were allowed to listen to in the car was Queen if you were there.
33:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, really not an exaggeration. We were living in rural Norfolk, so there was a lot of the car. There was the nearest shop was five miles away, school was 20 miles away, although that was a bus. And every time we got in the car, even if it was like 10 past six on a winter's morning, this tape would go in and I'd be trying to essentially do PR for the band because they weren't my parents' cup of tea. My parents were into, you know, John McLaughlin and Jeff Beck and things like that. And they, it was honestly a campaign for seven years and now they hold them in huge affection. But I don't know what was going on psychologically there with trying to make your parents love the thing that you loved, which is so much at odds with what you
33:59 Speaker 02 usually hear about what teenagers are trying to do. But I have spoken to people for whom they had a similar thing. You do want your parents to love the thing that you love. You're not trying to necessarily rebel with your music and and that's kind of a, I don't know what it what it is psychologically.
34:16 Adam Buxton? Yeah, I had exactly the same thing.
34:17 Speaker 02 Did you?
34:18 Adam Buxton? Yeah. And I never wanted to be one of those children who told their parents to fuck off. I found it really upsetting when I saw it in films and TV.
34:26 Speaker 02 Me too.
34:27 Adam Buxton? And because that was my worst nightmare, was to fall out with my parents like that.
34:31 Speaker 02 Yes.
34:32 Adam Buxton? And I also just absolutely loved them. I just thought they were great. I mean, you know, there were there were problems there.
34:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
34:38 Adam Buxton? But.
34:39 Speaker 02 So did you ever fall out with them?
34:41 Adam Buxton? Not properly, no. I mean, the the. You know, I guess because we were never close enough to fall out is the sad truth.
34:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
34:48 Adam Buxton? If if that makes sense.
34:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
34:50 Adam Buxton? And um but I really related to that feeling of wanting them to like the things that I liked.
34:58 Speaker 02 Mm.
34:59 Adam Buxton? And I had that with Bowie and my mum indulged that and she was really sweet about it. And she said, oh, yes, he's very good. Yes. Oh, I like Major Tongue, she said. Major Tongue, that's very good, that one.
35:12 Speaker 02 Would she sit and listen with you?
35:14 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah. And she, you know, and I was confident enough that she was going to be supportive and interested. That I played her a song called All The Mad Men, which is a pretty long, pretty dense.
35:24 Speaker 02 Oh, wonderful.
35:25 Adam Buxton? Progie Bowie song from The Man Who Sold The World. And she's like, that's very interesting. That's very interesting. Yeah, and I I was just like, yes, mum loves David. The payoff was that we ended up watching The Man Who Fell To Earth Together. That was pretty uncomfortable.
35:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
35:41 Adam Buxton? Watching Rip Torn having energetic sex with a young student with my mum.
35:48 Speaker 02 How old were you then?
35:49 Adam Buxton? I must have been about ten or eleven or something. So I I thought, I was like, oh, it's mum, it's a sci fi film. David Bowie's in a sci fi film. I was thinking Star Wars with David Bowie.
35:59 Speaker 02 So you you went to the cinema, did you?
36:00 Adam Buxton? No.
36:01 Speaker 02 No, no, no, no.
36:01 Adam Buxton? It was on TV. I think it was the first time that it had been shown on British TV on BBC Two.
36:05 Speaker 02 And so it was particularly your mum that would watch this stuff with you. Yes, yeah.
36:09 Adam Buxton? No, there's no way my dad was gonna. It was like clear from day one, my dad made it very clear. He thought everything I was into was dog shit.
36:16 Speaker 02 Really?
36:16 Adam Buxton? Yeah. You know, even Roger Scruton, the conservative philosopher, who my dad was a big fan of, and wrote a big, long, eviscerating piece about how terrible pop music was, the tyranny of pop, saying it was all dog shit.
36:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
36:28 Adam Buxton? But even in that piece, he says, apart from Metallica. Because his son was into Metallica, so even Roger Scruton.
36:36 Speaker 02 Roger Scruton's son had got through.
36:37 Adam Buxton? Well, Metallica, I saw some Metallica at the Glastonbury and I thought, yes, okay, there is some merit to that.
36:42 Speaker 02 Wow, yes.
36:43 Adam Buxton? But my dad never had that.
36:44 Speaker 02 So was your mum compensating on some level, do you think?
36:47 Adam Buxton? No, no, she was genuinely, she was a lot younger than he was.
36:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
36:50 Adam Buxton? So she, you know, she loved the Beatles. She grew up loving them. And she liked pop music and, yeah, we used to listen to Radio One. Together in the car and she was into Ghost Town by The Specials. She thought, oh, yeah, this is brilliant. And she even liked Einstein a Go Go by Landscape. And I was like, yeah, okay, mum's into landscape, a message in a bottle, I remember.
37:15 Speaker 02 Yes.
37:15 Adam Buxton? And when we listened to that, the police, and she was like, oh, this is brilliant.
37:19 Speaker 02 Do you remember the feeling in your body when they like something, it's so, it's like, I don't know what, can't describe it, it's like an adrenaline bolt.
37:27 Adam Buxton? It really was.
37:28 Speaker 02 And you get almost overly excited and then there's a kind of crash because you realise that sometimes they're just being nice about some music, it wasn't necessarily that it had gone deep into their soul, or maybe they'd forgotten the song the next time you played it to them and you thought, did that moment mean nothing to you?
37:44 Adam Buxton? Yeah, I don't, you know, the only crash I had with mum, because I don't think she ever sugarcoated, well, maybe she did. I was just so far gone, I was like, mum's into width of a circle by David Bowie. But she, I then played her, I then got into Thomas Dolby through Joe Cornish, who got me into the album The Flat Earth.
38:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
38:05 Adam Buxton? I love that album, oh my god, and there was the, the, the title track on there. I just listened to it every night for a couple of years or something when I was in my teens.
38:15 Speaker 02 Hmm.
38:15 Adam Buxton? Around O level times, it was my balm.
38:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
38:18 Adam Buxton? When I was stressed out. And I played it to my mum and she was like, it's a bit wet, isn't it?
38:24 Speaker 02 Oh, wet, that's harsh. Yes, that's not what you want. You want something more dismissive rather than something actually critical like that. You don't want a specific kind of legation.
38:36 Adam Buxton? Wet.
38:37 Speaker 02 A bit wet. I don't give my mum enough credit for music because my dad was the one that we all think of as being musical. My mum actually brought a lot of the records into the house, so she went out and bought Graceland, she bought Blue, because my dad wouldn't bother. But when we were in the car, sitting in the back, you know, I would have lined up something to play them. And sometimes my mum would talk over the very best bit of the song. And I remember like sometimes like pushing my fingernails into my palms with frustration because mum had like spoiled this song I was trying to present to dad. And it must be something to do with like trying to present your innermost self really to your parents and wanting, you're talking about not necessarily knowing one another well enough to have fights. And I think there is this awkwardness, isn't there, in families?
39:22 Speaker 02 And music can be a way of trying to connect, almost like romantically with other family members. And that's why when it fails, it feels so bad, because it's so exposing, this is what I love. I may not be able to say I love you, but I love this song and, you know, very vivid to me.
39:40 Adam Buxton? I love the idea of you making noises to cover up a fluffed note from Freddie in a live recording.
39:48 Speaker 02 Well, he sang sharp. Not many people sang sharp. I think a lot of people sang flat, like Sinatra. Sharp's like better on the ear than flat, but you could still notice sometimes in in live performances, he would go like slightly above the note and I'd go like that. Because of course I imagined that my dad was listening so carefully that he would notice the sharpness.
40:09 Adam Buxton? Has he just gone sharp?
40:11 Speaker 02 He wasn't listening. I think he blocked it out because if it's seven years of this, you block it out, don't you? I never got any real feedback at all, apart from he did admire Brian May. So he's a guitarist and you couldn't not admire Brian May if you're a guitarist. So I suppose that was one of my bit of ammunition, but of course I just wanted them to like Roger Taylor, so.
40:30 Adam Buxton? What was going on in your head with Roger Taylor? That was pure.
40:33 Speaker 02 Lust. I was very lustful of Roger Taylor. But it's weird because I was thirteen, I suppose, and I liked Roger Taylor at the age he was when I discovered him. So I liked him in his mid forty's.
40:44 Adam Buxton? Okay.
40:44 Speaker 02 So if you think about the the me too-ness of that, the distance of age.
40:48 Adam Buxton? He's a good looking forty year old.
40:50 Speaker 02 He was really good looking till about fifty, I think. And then it changed a little bit, but he had a good goatee at fifty. Little glasses, like tight jeans, cowboy boots, goatee. I quite liked all that. So it was weird because I wasn't looking back at pictures of him when he was like twenty five. It was as he was then.
41:08 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
41:08 Speaker 02 When we went to see him play the Cambridge Corn Exchange with my parents.
41:12 Adam Buxton? And that was him playing a solo show?
41:13 Speaker 02 He's had a very prolific solo career.
41:17 Adam Buxton? And were you genuinely into those solo albums?
41:19 Speaker 02 Yes.
41:20 Adam Buxton? Oh, yes.
41:20 Speaker 02 Yes, and they were patchy, but I put a lot of energy into them. Including into the patchy songs.
41:27 Adam Buxton? And then you met him properly. I mean, you met him after that Corn Exchange show, right?
41:31 Speaker 02 No, I met him um years later. So we we we actually started going on holiday to where we knew he lived.
41:39 Speaker 02 There was an entire like programme made about this, unfortunately. We he had a he has a house in Cornwall and and I just managed to persuade my parents to get rent a holiday cottage.
41:48 Adam Buxton? And did they understand why?
41:50 Speaker 02 They just did it. So that was kind of, you know, showing love really, wasn't it?
41:53 Adam Buxton? But did they know that it was because, oh, right, okay.
41:56 Speaker 02 And we had to do a lot of hanging around outside the house, which had big a big wall outside it. So we never saw anything. And then one day we did actually see him walking down Lemon Street in Truro and followed him into the cinema and bought tickets for Godzilla and sat behind him for the entire film and then got an autograph. So it definitely started to get the thing out of my system when I'd I'd actually met him.
42:22 Adam Buxton? Was that a good day, though, when you got his autograph? Or did you sort of, yeah, that was good?
42:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, it was like I'd come of age. It was just before, it was the end of my A levels. I was due to go to university and I felt like something lifted because our lives had for a moment intersected and it felt like there was there was a future without him in it, if it's hard to say. Yeah, it was good. It was like growing up or something. I think when you go into the orbit of the person for a minute, it takes away some of the force field of like worship and pain that goes behind those musical obsessions, you know.
42:57 Adam Buxton? Wow. And then how old were you then when you sat down for the profiles that you wrote that are in the book?
43:03 Speaker 02 So when I met him for the interview, it was twenty eleven, so a long time later. But I still found all the old feelings were kind of there.
43:10 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
43:10 Speaker 02 He's the only person who I I sort of run out of questions around because he doesn't like journalists very much and he answers very concisely. And then I found myself looking at the clock and I still had twenty minutes with him. I didn't know what else to say. And I ended up at one point, I was like, so um what are your hobbies?
43:29 Adam Buxton? That's all right.
43:30 Speaker 02 I was like, I I don't know. I like I like books. And I was like, I can't believe that this I'm supposed to be this good rock interview and I have nothing to say to this person because I'm because of my past.
43:43 Adam Buxton? How did you feel afterwards then? Was that weird?
43:46 Speaker 02 I think it was nice to write about them in that, in that way where you could kind of straddle your, your teenage life and your present.
43:54 Adam Buxton? I thought you were gonna say something else.
43:58 Speaker 02 I wish. Never. But I still, yeah, I still did kind of like quite fancy him when I met him. It's weird. I think I always would, you know?
44:05 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
44:11 Adam Buxton? Is that real melody?
44:18 Speaker 00 Have you seen my phone charger? I left it right there.
44:24 Speaker 00 Did you see it? Have you got it?
44:30 Speaker 00 Where's my charger gone?
44:33 Speaker 00 Where's my phone charger?
44:36 Speaker 00 The battery's about to die.
44:39 Speaker 00 It was on the table.
44:42 Speaker 00 Round and round in their heads go the chord progressions, the empty lyrics and the impovished fragments of tune. And boom goes the brain box at the start of every bar, at the start of every bar.
45:00 Speaker 02 Boom goes the brain box.
45:19 Adam Buxton? What was your other big viral piece?
45:21 Speaker 02 The man who inspired Joni Mitchell's Carrie.
45:24 Adam Buxton? Right.
45:25 Speaker 02 That was a different one. That's the end of the book really, because it felt, it's a very recent piece, just after the pandemic, and it felt like maybe the end of something for me in a funny way. It's not a rock star, it's a man who was trapped in a song at the age of 23 and has spent his whole life. Either trying to milk it or saying, don't talk to me about that bloody song, please, you know, because she wrote it when they shared a cave together.
45:49 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
45:50 Speaker 02 In Mattela and um.
45:51 Adam Buxton? Mattela is the island in Greece.
45:53 Speaker 02 In Greece, yeah, and she'd just released Ladies of the Canyon and she was just about to start writing Blue. And she lived with him in the summer between. The amazing thing is, I think she went to Greece. Right in the middle of the press period for Ladies of the Canyon. It shows how different things. She wasn't required to be around for any interviews or something.
46:12 Adam Buxton? So this is, what year was this?
46:14 Speaker 02 Seventy one.
46:15 Adam Buxton? Okay.
46:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, and, or seventy or seventy one.
46:19 Adam Buxton? So she was already getting pretty well known.
46:21 Speaker 02 Just on the rise.
46:22 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
46:22 Speaker 02 And people followed her around on the island. She always had an entourage and he was a. Very um rough, misanthropic kind of posh guy from South Carolina, who I think probably did a lot of drugs at that point. And he was a bit like a bodyguard as well as a boyfriend. People stayed clear of them. He cooked in the Mermaid Cafe. And he's in two songs because he's in California as well. The redneck who. Stole the camera, gave me back my smile, but he kept my camera to sell. That was Carrie. And I'd been trying to get him for years. He said he was writing a memoir. And then I wrote a piece on Blue and then he got in touch and said, okay, do you want to do the interview now? And I met him in Paris.
47:05 Speaker 02 But that was so much fun, that piece, because it was really weird telling somebody's story that had never been told, you know.
47:12 Adam Buxton? Yeah, and he was forthcoming.
47:13 Speaker 02 He was really forthcoming and he was poetic and. Quite narcissistic in a, in a great way. A character. And he looked like a kind of an old pirate or something. And he, again, he just knew how to. For someone who hadn't really done any interviews, his quotes were were perfect. He just, they just kind of rolled out of him. Quite economical in a funny way. And it felt to me, yeah, like I was kind of almost. Just looking at projection more about.
47:42 Speaker 02 What we feel this man might have been in this song and what he actually is. And it sort of took, it just changed things a little bit for me in a funny way.
47:50 Adam Buxton? Because he did get swallowed up by it, didn't he? He allowed himself to, well, he followed her back to the US. She invited him back.
48:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
48:01 Adam Buxton? To California.
48:02 Speaker 02 The story went way beyond the song, that they did actually try to make things work. But he was living with her in Laurel Canyon at a period when she was recording with Crosby, Stills and Nash and James Taylor, and he just was complete fish out of water. He said that people would come around to look at the gorilla she'd brought home from the zoo. He felt like a a very rough kind of figure, which is funny because he was from a posh, like, antebellum family, but it was, it was so much fun to do it in so much depth and
48:29 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
48:29 Speaker 02 You know, even talk to the person who made her dulcimer that she was playing in that period. But I had no desire to talk to Joni Mitchell because it's like, this is telling the other story. I couldn't have got Joni Mitchell anyway.
48:40 Adam Buxton? Have you not met her?
48:41 Speaker 02 No, I don't think I, I might be able to get her through Cary if I really, really tried, but it's so unlikely. She's so sort of protected and
48:49 Adam Buxton? Right.
48:49 Speaker 02 Probably have to interview Brandy Carlisle instead. I haven't got much to say to Brandy Carlisle.
48:56 Adam Buxton? Who would be the women of music that you would love to speak to most?
49:02 Speaker 02 Joni. Um, now I'm gonna, my brain's failing.
49:07 Adam Buxton? I mean, on my, on my wishlist from day one has been Bjork.
49:11 Speaker 02 Yeah.
49:12 Adam Buxton? Even though I think that becomes less and less likely with every year that passes, it seems like she's just, I haven't heard anyone interviewing her in depth for years and years.
49:22 Speaker 02 Yeah.
49:23 Adam Buxton? But it's such a shame because I watched this South Bank profile again the other day that I think was towards the end of the eighties maybe. And it's so good and she's just brilliant and everything she says is fascinating in the way she says it and.
49:39 Speaker 02 Everything's fresh, isn't it, with some people?
49:42 Adam Buxton? Yeah, but she's that very rare thing of being someone who is so talented and so original, but she actually is able to describe what she does in a really interesting way and articulate some of what makes her music so extraordinary.
49:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, so she's got an artist's brain.
49:59 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
50:00 Speaker 02 So she thinks constantly outside the box, but she can actually explain in almost a nerdy way.
50:05 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
50:05 Speaker 02 Why she's doing things.
50:06 Adam Buxton? I love the piece about Kevin Ayers.
50:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
50:09 Adam Buxton? And I remember reading that in The Word after you'd written it. When was that? That was like.
50:13 Speaker 02 Two thousand eight, very early.
50:14 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah. Right, so that's right, the beginning of your writing career.
50:18 Speaker 02 It was the first feature I wrote.
50:20 Adam Buxton? Whoa.
50:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
50:22 Adam Buxton? Thrown in somewhat at the deep end.
50:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
50:25 Adam Buxton? Were you a fan of his?
50:26 Speaker 02 I'd never heard of him.
50:27 Adam Buxton? Okay, I got into him through a band called Gorky Zygotic Monkey.
50:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
50:32 Adam Buxton? And they wrote a song called Kevin Ayers. I was like, what? Who's Kevin Ayers? And so then I I looked him up and I listened to some soft machine and I listened to the solo albums and there's a couple of those solo albums that are pretty good.
50:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
50:46 Adam Buxton? One or two Kevin Ayers songs that are some of my favourite songs ever, shouting from a bucket blues. And I was interested to know more about him. I didn't really have much of a sense of what he was like.
50:59 Speaker 02 Hmm.
51:00 Adam Buxton? So did you, how much of his music did you listen to before you went out there?
51:04 Speaker 02 I did, I listened to a lot of it before he went and I kind of got up to speed with him, but I'd been given it the assignment by Mark Allen because, a little bit like we're talking earlier about this invisible dynamics in an interview, they thought, for whatever reason, it might be good to get a young woman to go over and interview this famous rock crumpeter.
51:23 Adam Buxton? Right, okay.
51:25 Speaker 02 Which again now sounds dodgy, doesn't it?
51:27 Adam Buxton? It does. It sounds like they're exploiting your youth and beauty to basically be preyed upon by this old ruer.
51:36 Speaker 02 But then he was so, he was so vulnerable. What I found was not like the image that had been painted in The Word Office. They thought he was a, exactly, an old ruer knocking back the claret, um, living the life of Riley in the south of France, away from everything and living on PRS checks and things. And he lived in, I would say, close to poverty alone. And he was a chronic alcoholic and he was carrying a blue plastic bag that he called his like, um, what did he call it, my sweetie bag or something like that. And it was just full of prescription painkillers and things. And it was a very, very sad experience because he responded well to me.
52:16 Speaker 02 I liked him. I felt very shocked by, not only by the condition he was in, but by the knowledge that I was gonna have to burst some of the bubble of, of what this kind of great old rock ruer was actually like. Like I couldn't go home and pretend that he was having a great time. He drank neat pints of Pernod. He drove me down a mountainside after two bottles of wine. And I remember just thinking that I, I wish my mum was here to stop me getting in this car, but I've got to get in this car because I've got to get this peace, you know. But when we did actually speak, it was very intimate, very confessional, and again beautifully economical.
52:56 Speaker 02 Like he talked about conning on the streets of London, like basically promising sexual favours and then running off before he actually had to do them.
53:03 Adam Buxton? When he was young and beautiful.
53:05 Speaker 02 When he was a child. So, yeah, so he, I think he was at boarding schools expelled from some. Father was a BBC producer, very cold relationship.
53:12 Adam Buxton? Right, because he's quite, it's sort of a upper middle class family, right?
53:15 Speaker 02 Really upper sad, like upper middle class story of.
53:18 Adam Buxton? Cause his, his voice, he's quite sort of well spoken, yeah.
53:19 Speaker 02 Very plummy, yeah, yeah.
53:22 Adam Buxton? That's awful. I didn't know that about, yeah.
53:24 Speaker 02 So that's sort of real dislocation from his family and his relationship with the members of Soft Machine at school was the first intimacy he'd ever had, he put it, put it that way. And he really just said, look, I've always wanted to do as little as possible. I've never considered any other profession other than music because the smart people are the people who don't do anything. And then you looked at sort of what doing nothing was. He'd pulled out of a tour, basically hospitalized himself with painkillers. On the verge of a European tour, he was not in a state where you could do a comeback for Kevin Ayers, but they were trying to make one. So there was a manager there who was trying to get him back on the scene and he wasn't really up to it.
54:06 Speaker 02 So it was really, it was a very sad experience, but kind of wonderful in some ways. Seemed to go on for a very long time.
54:13 Adam Buxton? How long were you out there?
54:15 Speaker 02 I felt like it was a week. It might have been three days or so. He got very attached to me and he assumed that I was going to stay with him at his house.
54:28 Speaker 02 Which, again, in this day and age, sounds a bit dodgy, but at the time, it just felt kind of sad that he he showed me in the into this little room with this little single bed in it and said, this is where you're sleeping. I'll make up. I'll make this bed up for you. And I had to explain to his manager that I wasn't what he wanted. And then there was this really, honestly, a really strange moment where I was standing on the cobble streets of Carcassonne, and the manager went into his house, and I heard him saying, it's not nineteen sixty seven, Kevin, you can't do this. And then there was this like bashing of pots and pans. And then the manager came out and said, like, don't worry, you're staying at your hotel as planned. But he'd sort of assumed at the end of our exchange over several
55:11 Speaker 02 days that there would be some reciprocal event.
55:16 Adam Buxton? Right.
55:17 Speaker 02 Or a closeness. It was it was sadder than it sounds. It wasn't leery or.
55:22 Adam Buxton? That comes across in the piece, yeah.
55:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
55:24 Adam Buxton? He doesn't want to grab you.
55:26 Speaker 02 He wouldn't have laid a finger on me. Yeah, yeah.
55:29 Adam Buxton? Just a sort of delusional, sad impulse to get sexy.
55:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. And a better era when that's what happened.
55:38 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
55:38 Speaker 02 With journalists.
55:39 Adam Buxton? And it was cool, and it wasn't a problem, and everyone was fine.
55:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. And if you had a connection, that's how it was expressed. I mean, it's lovely when you meet people. Carrie was a bit like that, too. You meet people who definitely live still in another era.
55:52 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
55:52 Speaker 02 In terms of human relationships, and it's very, very, very bohemian. I think he met his, um, the mother of his daughter Galen, he kind of stole from Richard Branson after a key party.
56:06 Adam Buxton? This is.
56:07 Speaker 02 Kevin Ayers, Galen Ayers is Kevin Ayers's grown up daughter. And her mum Christine Tomasi was Richard Branson's wife, and Kevin Ayers tempted her away, literally after a key party. So it's all very like.
56:19 Adam Buxton? Whoa.
56:20 Speaker 02 Um, shared, shared love, things like that. But it was hard for me to. The piece flowed very much. I remember writing really fast, but I was crying on the way home on the plane because I was just like, oh god, is this what journalism is? If you find someone in a state, you have to say. But actually, I think maybe some people wouldn't have said. You look back over old rock profiles in the eighties on rock star pages and stuff, and you get hints of bad things, but they're sort of like, still the dominant story of this person's a hero kind of overrides that. And maybe people don't want to see what they don't want to see. Maybe a male journalist might have thought more that this was someone living the life of Riley. I don't know, but I'm not sure.
57:04 Adam Buxton? Did you get any feedback from him or his daughter?
57:06 Speaker 02 Never, no, no. I spoke to his daughter years later, actually, because she produced a photo book and she was a remarkable person. She's a musician and she was just very, she'd obviously done a lot of thinking about her relationship with this man because she'd become his kind of estate manager and his carer towards the end of his life. And she told me on the phone that she used to think if I turn my back, he'll go and die, just to prove a point. And he did. So she, I think she didn't talk to him for a couple of weeks and that's when he passed away in Carcassonne. So she was left with the unpaid tax bills, the legacy, the music and everything, and has been trying to like figure her way through that ever since.
57:47 Speaker 02 But she sort of talked about him as being like a father, a god and a brother and a best friend, which really resonated with me with those figures of these kind of cosmic fathers that you get in, in music of the archetype, I suppose, don't know.
58:02 Adam Buxton? So what about your literal father? Is he still with us?
58:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, he is. Yeah, yeah. So he's seventy one in May. And he was an amateur, well, when my mum met him, he was playing jazz guitar professionally in a little jazz club in Annick in Northumberland.
58:21 Adam Buxton? Is your mother a musician as well?
58:23 Speaker 02 My mother's not, no, but she is musical, like she can hold a tune.
58:26 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
58:27 Speaker 02 But my dad's always been the, a sort of extremely emotional about music. When he listens to music, he often cries. And then when he's talking about music, he gets a huge lump in his throat and can't, it's really weird.
58:39 Adam Buxton? Are you not like that?
58:41 Speaker 02 I am, yeah, I am. I think I've got that. And it's sort of seeing that repressed emotion. But how it's kind of so much on the surface through music with him. He can cry over Tina Arena song.
58:54 Adam Buxton? Sure, of course.
58:56 Speaker 02 Sorrento Moon. Or Rhapsody in Blue, or something by Dorn Upshaw. It's sort of the centre of his emotional life, really. And I suppose it's always been mine as well. And he's very reserved. His parents were sort of Methodist Plymouth brethren, all that kind of thing. And so he doesn't express emotion that openly, but he is very emotional. So it's my, my way of communicating with him. The connection has been between me and my dad.
59:25 Adam Buxton? Yes.
59:25 Speaker 02 My whole life, but I'm not sure how much it is really there, or it's in my head, if you get what I mean. My dad will read this book, but he might be just very surprised that all this stuff goes on in my brain with regard to him and music. There is a lot, I think, that goes on in, we've been talking about children's relationship with wanting their parents to like the songs that they like. And there's a lot of projection that goes on there, isn't there? There's a lot of emotion and, and unfulfilled, unspoken feelings. And I noticed this very odd thing while writing the book. I went up to Hampstead Heath and I was listening to a Glen Campbell gospel album, which I often listen up there. He was just out of his.
1:00:06 Adam Buxton? What's the name of the gospel album?
1:00:07 Speaker 02 It's called Show Me Your Way. Show me your way, oh Lord, and I will give myself to thee. It's one of Glen's best albums. It's from about nineteen ninety and he'd been born again and sort of baptized in a freezing creek in Arkansas. He was like top of his game again, you know, clean, not drinking whiskey anymore. And he did some really good gospel songs. And I was listening to them up on the heath. And I suddenly realised that my whole life. I've been listening to music through my dad's ears. It's really creepy. So if there's a song that I like, I put it on. And then suddenly I'm out of my head and I'm into an imagined dad head going, dad will like this introduction.
1:00:47 Speaker 02 Dad will like this chord change. And then I get kind of a double hit because I'm imagining playing it to him. And a lot of this stuff I will never play to him. So this is what I mean. It's sort of internal. It's not really about him or the other person at all. And I I sort of think of it as like a quadraphonic listening, that there's always an imaginary audience. And I'll skip back to the beginning of the song and start it again to get the same kind of thrill of like. I suppose being twelve again and going to the dentist and pressing play and hoping that he likes it. Very weird, but maybe other people have the same thing, or maybe it's just me.
1:01:23 Adam Buxton? Why do you think that happens though? Was there a closeness that was not there in your relationship that you're trying to access? Via music?
1:01:32 Speaker 02 I think maybe a verbal expression of closeness, but the closeness is there, but it's. It's unspoken. If I say I love you, he. He gets quite choked up and he's he says it back, but it's I've only said it in recent years. But he was also, my mum went back to work when I was about two weeks old. But she was self-employed, so she was coming home all the time to breastfeed me and things like that. But my dad was. A house husband in the days when it was quite unusual. And he wrote a piece for parenting magazine called My Life as a House Husband when he was like, you know. He was about twenty four when I was born or something. And so I he was my he was sort of mummy in a.
1:02:15 Speaker 02 Simple nursery caring type way, slightly more than my mum. Because she was there less. So he I kind of imprinted onto him as. As mum, I suppose. So there is quite a lot of, you know, woo feeling bound up, but he's also a reserved person who. Doesn't go around verbally expressing it, so.
1:02:37 Speaker 02 All of course, I've I've discovered all of this in the last few months. I've just taken it for granted my whole life, really.
1:02:42 Adam Buxton? Yeah, well, there's a chapter called Dad's Girls and Frustrated Musicians, which is mainly about meeting Jeff Beck.
1:02:49 Speaker 02 Hmm.
1:02:50 Adam Buxton? And you say, for me, sharing Jeff was about something else, too. As the recent discovery of my bizarre, imaginary, quadraphonic listening habits suggested, I will always need my father to love any music I think is my own. I thought that was a lovely thing for a daughter to say about their father.
1:03:11 Speaker 02 Hmm.
1:03:11 Adam Buxton? I thought if my daughter ever expressed a similar sentiment, it would break my heart in the best way.
1:03:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, but then you felt that own that feeling yourself with your own parents, haven't you?
1:03:22 Adam Buxton? Yes.
1:03:22 Speaker 02 It's interesting that you you can't you almost, not that you can't imagine your daughter saying that, but it would be so wonderful. Whereas actually, it's a familiar thing to you. You kind of know that.
1:03:31 Adam Buxton? I know, I under I understand it, but I can't imagine them actually saying it. So your dad hasn't read the book yet.
1:03:37 Speaker 02 No.
1:03:38 Adam Buxton? I think that would be an amazing thing to read.
1:03:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think he.
1:03:41 Adam Buxton? For a dad.
1:03:41 Speaker 02 He it might be familiar to him, but it's not won't be something he's necessarily processed consciously. It's just he knows how neurotic I used to be about the stuff I liked and how much I wanted his his approval of of certain tracks. And so I think he'll probably be aware of all this, but it is a strange thing to put into words. Because I think when you think about musical potential, it's so innate, it's in all humans. And we all know what it's like to have a fantasy of being able to play an instrument or be in a band, or the kind of dreams you might have growing up about being in a rock band or something. I think it is about more than music. It's something about unleashed creative potential,
1:04:21 Speaker 02 which is why we do get so neurotically gripped by it. I don't know.
1:04:28 Adam Buxton? And yet, some people don't really give a shit about music.
1:04:30 Speaker 02 I know, I was thinking this the other day. Some people just aren't interested in music.
1:04:34 Adam Buxton? Or the or at least, you know, it's fine, but I'm like, I'm not gonna lose my mind over it.
1:04:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, how is that possible?
1:04:39 Adam Buxton? I know, I can't work it out. But now, as well as a fifty five year old man, I feel so disconnected from what's going on in the world musically anyway. It means something totally different.
1:04:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:04:50 Adam Buxton? It seems in the world.
1:04:51 Speaker 02 Yes, yeah, you have to have your own, don't you? And I feel the same. I don't get I don't get emotionally affected particularly by new new stuff I hear. But occasionally, you'll still get caught by. Even something as simple as a bit of mechanics, a chord change or a modulation or something that will make your hair stand on end. And then you will think, oh, yes, it's still in me. It's like, um, I think Jung described it as a direct line to the soul. And he was envious of musicians being able to like access like a, you know, people talk about the flow state and everything, don't they? You see jazz musicians playing and you just think, God, I'd love to be able to do that because every night, if they have a gig every night,
1:05:31 Speaker 02 they get to go to a higher plane as part of their job and then they come down from it again. And I don't get that in my daily life. Writing doesn't give me the same. It gives me a bit of the same, but it's, it's more like workman like and tiring and solitary. But yeah, I think if I could be anything, I would have been like a jazz piano player in a jazz rock group or something and then.
1:05:55 Adam Buxton? Have you tried to write any songs?
1:05:56 Speaker 02 Never.
1:05:57 Adam Buxton? Really?
1:05:58 Speaker 02 I think they would turn out like everything else. I just don't think I could do that. It's weird. Maybe it is possible, but.
1:06:04 Adam Buxton? I mean, you definitely could.
1:06:05 Speaker 02 You know how to write melodies, so I'm sure that you can, I'm sure that the guitar is, is kind of all part of it, isn't it? I'm sure you can.
1:06:14 Adam Buxton? Well, I don't know if I do know how to write melodies, but um, you know, I, I, I don't think I'll ever be, I don't think I'll ever write a good song, really.
1:06:24 Speaker 02 What is your?
1:06:25 Adam Buxton? But it's still nice to do. It's fun.
1:06:27 Speaker 02 That's the thing, isn't it? It's about whether you let go of the idea of actually being good.
1:06:31 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
1:06:31 Speaker 02 And that is hard.
1:06:33 Adam Buxton? It is hard. It is hard because obviously it would be so much better if you were.
1:06:39 Speaker 02 I think when you've been like academic and then you've gone into a writing career and everything has to be like to a certain standard. There's just some really arrogant part of me that can't bear the idea of just being
1:06:50 Adam Buxton? Mediocre.
1:06:50 Speaker 02 slightly okay on an instrument because it doesn't, oh God, you know, there's, there's no point starting if you're not going to be up to scratch on it. It's, it's not going to work, is it?
1:07:01 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
1:07:01 Speaker 02 What's your kind of musical fantasy then? What would you do if you could?
1:07:07 Adam Buxton? My musical fantasy is duetting with more or less any musician.
1:07:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:07:14 Adam Buxton? And being quite good. And, you know, I've tried to play out the fantasy on numerous occasions in public. And I don't think it's ever gone well. And I had a recent one that I haven't really spoken about, but. After I interviewed Kim Deal of Breeders and Pixies fame, she said, uh, she asked if I would interview her live as part of the promotion for her new album. And so I did this event at the Rio Cinema. And because we'd been noodling around, um, playing King of the Road, which was like the first song she ever learned how to play on the guitar by Roger Miller. And I'd been learning how to play it too. So I, I had this fantasy that she and I would duet on King of the Road.
1:07:59 Adam Buxton? And we'd do the harmonies and it would be great. And I'd play the guitar and, and I sort of tried to do it a little bit in the actual podcast, but it didn't, I couldn't actually play the guitar properly.
1:08:11 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:08:11 Adam Buxton? You know, it didn't, it didn't quite happen. But then she said afterwards, she was like, well, when we do this interview at the Rio, let's do King of the Road.
1:08:18 Speaker 02 Oh.
1:08:19 Adam Buxton? I was like, yes.
1:08:20 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:08:21 Adam Buxton? I've been waiting all my life for someone to say that, like one of my favorite musicians to say, let's do a duet. Okay. Anyway, long story short, you know, I spent every minute of the next week practicing King of the Road. I said like, are you okay to meet up like a couple of hours before? And we can just run through it, make sure. And she said, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, on the day she got delayed and uh, we didn't get any rehearsal time at all. And so we shouldn't have done it.
1:08:50 Speaker 02 So you did do it.
1:08:51 Adam Buxton? Oh, we did do it.
1:08:52 Speaker 02 Amazing.
1:08:53 Adam Buxton? And it wasn't amazing.
1:08:56 Speaker 02 How bad was it?
1:08:57 Adam Buxton? It was a total car crash.
1:08:58 Speaker 02 Did it stop?
1:09:00 Adam Buxton? Uh.
1:09:00 Speaker 02 Or did you manage to continue?
1:09:01 Adam Buxton? It didn't, it didn't start for about, it took about three goes to start because I started with the do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. So in my mind, I was just gonna do that and then she was gonna join in and then we'd, but instead what she said was like, okay, everyone in the crowd, do the clicks.
1:09:20 Adam Buxton? So all the audience started clicking, like in the song.
1:09:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:09:23 Adam Buxton? Do do do do do is how it's supposed to start. But the clicks put me off and it rattled me and I was like.
1:09:30 Speaker 02 Because you were trying to keep in time with the clicks as well.
1:09:33 Adam Buxton? And I fumbled the riff and so I fumbled the riff twice. And then eventually we were just like, oh, fuck it, let's just do it. And then, and we got through it, but it was a total car crash.
1:09:43 Speaker 02 It's nice that she just assumed that you're just like any professional musician could just like seamlessly slip into anything that she was.
1:09:49 Adam Buxton? I, you know, I did say to her, I was like, you understand that I can't actually play the guitar. Like I've learned how to play this song a bit, but I'm not a musician.
1:09:58 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:09:58 Adam Buxton? She's like, don't worry, it'll be fine.
1:09:59 Speaker 02 She doesn't know what that means.
1:10:00 Adam Buxton? Yeah, because she's just so.
1:10:01 Speaker 02 Everyone in her world can play the guitar a bit.
1:10:04 Adam Buxton? Exactly. I was looking at the audience and I could see people with their phones out.
1:10:09 Speaker 02 No, and it's going to go online straight away.
1:10:11 Adam Buxton? Oh, God. You know, and usually you look at stuff online and you see something that someone shot on their phone and it'll be a beautiful moment in a Q and A or someone where you can really see, wow, that person is talented. They can just do it on.
1:10:24 Speaker 02 This will be Adam Buxton Botch's guitar with Kim Deal. Oh, no.
1:10:29 Adam Buxton? Oh, man. I had someone, a friend of mine who, who said, oh, I'm going to come along and see you chat to Kim Deal. Uh, let's hook up for a drink. I didn't hear from them again.
1:10:53 Speaker 00 This is an ad for Squarespace.
1:10:56 Speaker 00 Okay, we'll return to the AI apocalypse in just a wee, wee moment, but first I wanted to talk about Squarespace. Do you know about Squarespace, Steve?
1:11:02 Adam Buxton? Uh, yes, Monty. I think I might even be a little bit more tuned into modern tech, websites, et cetera, than you. I don't know. Just guessing.
1:11:09 Speaker 00 Oh, Steve, I love this dynamic. I'm old and conservative and you're young and progressive. And that's what makes the Newswind podcast such great listening. But yes, you're right. I must admit, I didn't know much about Squarespace. But because my new grumble book, Hell in a Handcart, is out this month.
1:11:22 Adam Buxton? And I look forward to getting enraged by that, so I should hope.
1:11:25 Speaker 00 Em, um, um.
1:11:27 Adam Buxton? Anyway, the public. Blooster and Dogwhistle made a beautiful website for the book using Squarespace. I know, I got the newsletter that you sent out using Squarespace and the website does look great. Videos of you airing your views, members' areas for your mad fans. You've even got a merch store, I see. That's right, the Union Jack top hat is a big seller, but they constructed it all so fast with Squarespace. They did most of it over one lunchtime, Steve. Well, you wouldn't want to spend much longer on it, would you? Shut up, Steve. But here's the thing, anyone listening to this can start a free trial right now at squarespace.com/boxton and see how easy and versatile Squarespace is. And when they're ready to launch a new website or domain, they can save 10% off their first purchase by using the offer code BOXTON at checkout. Right, well, maybe I'll visit squarespace.com/boxton and start a new website just to refute all the nonsense in your new book.
1:12:11 Adam Buxton? Oh, don't do that, Steve. I will. Oh, shut up, Steve. Shut up. Now, back to more depressing matters on News Went.
1:12:20 Adam Buxton? Continue.
1:12:24 Adam Buxton? Come on. Yeah.
1:12:28 Adam Buxton? Oh, fuck you.
1:12:38 Adam Buxton? Hey, welcome back, podcats. You heard Kate Mossman talking to me and I'm very grateful indeed to Kate for making the time to waffle. Got a few links in the description today related to some of what we spoke about. Link to her book, Men of a Certain Age, of course, which I would recommend to anyone, but if you've got a kind of six music dad in your life, I think that would make a pretty great present for any occasion. There's a link to Kate reading the article she wrote about Kerry Raddits. "I Was Joni Mitchell's Kerry" is the title of that interview from 2015. Kate reads it very nicely. Sadly, she doesn't
1:13:21 Adam Buxton? do an audiobook of Men of a Certain Age. I think that's a shame. I would encourage her publishers to do one. That sounded wrong. I mean, do an audiobook.
1:13:34 Adam Buxton? Basically, there's a link in the description that takes you to my website, where you'll find all these other links and videos and picture of myself and Kate. There's also links to Kate's article about Terence Trent Darby, that I mentioned in the intro, from 2015. The Curious Afterlife of Terence Trent Darby, that's the new Statesman website. I think they let you have one or two articles for free, and then after that, they ask you to subscribe if you're not already subscribed. There is a free link to Kate's interview with Kevin Ayers, which was reprinted in The Guardian, originally in The Word magazine in 2008.
1:14:16 Adam Buxton? Also put the video of Kevin Ayers playing Shouting in a Bucket Blues on the Old Gray Whistle Test, pretty good version of that song. Sometimes I get too drunk, I feel so goddamn low. What else have you got link wise? Well, there's a link to The South Bank Show about Bjork, that I've already posted before in a previous episode, that documentary from 1997, which is really terrific. Uplifting, fascinating.
1:14:50 Adam Buxton? Well, I'll tell you the other picture I've got. If you click the links button in the description and scroll down to the bottom of the page on my blog, you will see a picture of my alien cherry pie. The one I made when I was practising the weekend before I shot Bake Off. I still haven't actually seen my episode of Bake Off. Not particularly keen to watch it myself, but I didn't know if they'd included the picture of the original pie, because I was so gutted when the pie didn't work out. In case you don't know what I'm bollocking on about, I was on the Great British Bake Off a couple of weekends ago as I speak. Shot it last summer in June, and I made for my showstopper challenge a cherry pie.
1:15:39 Adam Buxton? With an alien, as in a baby alien xenomorph from the film Alien, bursting out from the centre, all made of pastry. That was the idea, which I was very excited about. And I spent a few days practising. And I eventually made a version of it that was, I think, pretty good. And there's a picture of that on the webpage for today's episode on my blog. You know, I was gonna make it even better, like I had to use those little silver cake balls, those horrible, horrible crunchy silver cake balls. I had some of those around and I thought, well, I'll use those as a placeholder for the teeth.
1:16:24 Adam Buxton? Because the real alien has little, what looked like little metal teeth in the original film. So I was gonna figure out that problem on the day. As it worked out, spoiler,
1:16:38 Adam Buxton? uh, I didn't get that far. I had other problems to deal with. I don't know if it came across, but I was absolutely gutted
1:16:47 Adam Buxton? that I wasn't able to realise my vision
1:16:51 Adam Buxton? in the way that I had done when I was practising. Totally fine, I'm over it. Yes, okay, I have written about it all in the introduction to my book as well, but it's fine. I've got it in perspective. There's bigger problems in the world. The sun has just come out, out here. Blue sky, the wind has died down. Last night, I went out in Norwich to the beautiful Playhouse Theatre. And I was the special guest for Kial Smith-Bino's improv night called Cool Story Bro with a K.
1:17:33 Adam Buxton? Because it's K S B, you see, like Kyle Smith Bino. Luckily, I was not doing any improvising. That is my idea of pure hell. I was just kind of emceeing really and encouraging the Norwich audience to share some stories that Cael and his troupe could improvise around. It was good fun. Non-stop hilarity and brilliant comedic nimbleness from the cast. Last night it was Graham Dixon, Lola Rose Maxwell, Emily Lloyd-Saini, hope I'm pronouncing that right, and Robert Gilbert. Now, I Googled Robert Gilbert, just to check I'd got his name right.
1:18:16 Adam Buxton? And I would suggest to him that he might need to change his name. Because especially if you Google "Rob Gilbert comedian", forget about it. The only hits you get are for the Welsh comedian Rod Gilbert. Robert Gilbert is also an actor. But still, I apologize, Robert, if you've had this conversation many thousands of times and you're tired of it, but I wouldn't rule out a name rebrand, especially as he's a star in the making. I mean, they all were. I just really felt like, wow, these people are incredibly talented, all of them. Graham, Lola Rose, Emily, Robert, and of course, Cael, who's brilliant.
1:18:59 Adam Buxton? I think I'd seen Lola Rose Maxwell on YouTube before, doing stuff with Stevie Martin. Very funny, but in real life, on stage, amazing, amazing. So funny, silly, generous, warm. It was so good. It was a great night, and I would really recommend going along to one of those shows. There's a link to the Cool Story Bro website where I think you'll find their tour dates. It was great. I'm gonna say it was life-affirming, all right? Deal with that.
1:19:34 Adam Buxton? Hello bird. Now, what kind of bird is that? I've got to find out, I'm so thick. I'm gonna do the chirpomatic. Oh, they've flown away.
1:19:46 Adam Buxton? Oh, Rosie, you're looking very beautiful there. Let me get a snap.
1:19:52 Adam Buxton? Oh, yes. Okay, I'll put that photo in along with the links today. This is Rosie with her new haircut. Now, what is that bird? I'm gonna see if I can describe it. Small, yellow and green-breasted bird. Black and white head. I know you bird people out there are gonna be slapping your foreheads at how obvious this is, but... Ah, there's lots of pictures, but it doesn't say what the bird's called. No, it's not a goldfinch. It's not a cyskin.
1:20:29 Adam Buxton? It's not a yellow wagtail. It's a great tit! It's one of the tits, Rose! It's an obvious one. Anyway, there you go. Maybe I'll remember it from now on. Okay, I'm gonna get on the crunchy track and head on back.
1:20:46 Adam Buxton? Thank you very much indeed to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his invaluable production support and conversation editing on this episode. Thanks so much, Seamus. Thanks to Helen Green, she does the beautiful artwork for this podcast. Thank you very much to everyone at Acast who work hard liaising with my sponsors. But thank you most of all to you. You are the hardcore! And I hope you won't think it too creepy or twee if I propose a sonic hug. Come here.
1:21:17 Adam Buxton? Good to see you. Hope you have a wonderful Easter. And if it's all over by the time you listen to this, don't worry, there's another one. It'll be here before you know it. Until then, until then, go carefully. And for what it's worth, do bear in mind that I love you. Bye!
1:21:48 Speaker 03 Subscribe, please like and subscribe. Gimme like and smile and a thumbs up. I shake a pan when me bums up. Gimme like and smile and a thumbs up. I shake a pan when me bums up. Like and subscribe, like and subscribe. Like and subscribe, please like and subscribe. Gimme like and smile and a thumbs up. I shake a pan when me bums up. Gimme like and smile and a thumbs up. I shake a pan when me bums up. Like and subscribe, like and subscribe. Like and subscribe, please like and subscribe.
Previous EP.242 - RICHARD AYOADE Next EP.244 - LOUIS THEROUX & RICHARD DAWSON LIVE Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated