Interviews

Here are three interviews given by Paul Heaton:
Pulse Magazin '94 - Amazing insight into some of the lyrics of Miaow
Gay Times Dec. 2003 - About Gaze and the song 101% Man especially
Uncut Magazin Jan. 2004 - Al Green's influence on Paul

Pulse Magazin, Hull - March/April '94 edition - typed up by Julia Grant - Thanks Julia!

What about your new songs then?
This is the single "Good As Gold" (Paul shows me the lyrics). It's about the fact that you're made to believe there's a chance of some sort of heavenly after life, but as Solomon Burke said, "Don't give me flowers after I'm dead and buried, give me them now". It's about having your life now, not accepting second best, just because they tell you religiously and spiritually that you might get first best if you accept second best now. Like if you accept the shit now, you're going to get something better afterwards! You will not get a better chance. The life you live is the life you live now. I'm saying "this is it!", I'm not saying people should go mad, it's not a hedonist song. It's saying I want the Ingrid Bergman kiss now, not afterwards. You only live once.
The album's first single then, have you shot the video to promote it yet?
I wrote the script, and Tim Pope directed it but as it happens I wasn't able to get to the editing. So the finished product wasn't exactly how we wanted it. It's alright though, it's bright and colourful. It reflects the lyrics. What it was really, because the songs about "carry on regardless", it's sort of like you've got to keep going, just in case. It was based on a cycle journey. So we're cycling up and down hills, and during the chorus, which is saying "I want it all now", is when we are going downhill, and have the normal "getting on with life" is all uphill and we just have to keep going. It didn't transcribe quite as well as it sounds, but it was ok.
Is the new stuff much of a departure from the recognisable Beautiful South songs then?
Not really, even though it's not a ballad which we are probably recognised for, but it's a jollyish sort of sound with darker lyrics, I suppose. It's not really typical of the album though, the lyrics are a lot straighter in general. The song we're considering for the second single is "Hold on to what", which is about a prostitute, a private soldier and a pensioner. Which again is about people being hoodwinked really. A similar angle. People tell you to hold on, but, y'know, hold on to what? Yeah, it's a similar sentiment to our current single, but, it's not some sort of obsession. When you write songs you tend to write them in themes, y'know, songs that have a similar feel to them. But yeah, there's probably about 3 or 4 songs here about being hoodwinked, politically or socially, and there's a couple about people hoodwinking someone sexually. The one I feel is the strongest on the album lyrically is this one... "Mini-correct".Paul again hands over his lyric book. It's a song about men by a man, y'know what I mean, certain men anyway.
It's a really sad song this Paul. To me it actually sums up millions of peoples situations. It's really astute.
I hope so, but this is one of the songs Briana objected to most strongly.
I can't understand that, it's lyrically excellent and makes a statement on behalf of women. It's an attack on common male attitudes, can't she see that?
Well there's quite a strange line between making a point on a woman's behalf, which I don't want to do. What I wanted to do was give a mans view of men. A criticism. It's debatable anyway. A strange issue, a very grey area. Portraying a woman as a victim yet again. Y'see in the song, he gets all the punch lines, a clever answer to everything she says, that's how it set off in my mind originally, it's supposed to have a "Peter and the Wolf" feel to it. When I'm singing the male lines it's very low, with a haunting sound, like a baddie, whereas the woman is the opposite. So it gives the impression of the male as the bastard. Which I was surprised was misunderstood. I'll show you a more optimistic song anyway. This one's about love. It's about an argument I had with someone in a bar, a couple of the songs are about arguments in bars actually. Someone said... "God you've got wrinkled eyes, for a 31 year old", but I told him I'd had a good time for every line, for each crows foot, and this song was based around a particular person who I love, I think, and just going through the good memories, as opposed to the bad ones. They're the crucial lines, those two... "You can't have too many good times, you can't have too many lines." It's basically a love song and it's much more optimistic. First love song I've written. A personal love song.
This next song I wrote about racism and skinheads. Unfortunately Morrisey and Marr's producers refused us permission to do the end section which would have been quite good... "Skinheads in a coma"... but anyway, it's about, you know when being a Marxist or whatever, you often get told to "fuck off to Russia".

* * *

This one, "Especially for you" is a song that's probably going to get me a lot of nutters, I mean with lines like "If you bought this song you're listening and I think that you know who, it matters not the mouth that's singing, this ones especially for you". It'll get me lots of 'em writing in if it's popular. Y'know the type who think "this one's about me!"

* * *

Here's a good one, it's called "Hooligans don't fall in love" it's about football hooligans really and about why people don't really give a fuck. About how people can lose it. You know, in life you can always end up being second best, well this is about them searching for some feeling of independance. You see the lines about there always being people with a fatter cigar or bigger car, well, without slagging him down, that was inspired by David Hemingway and his flashy car. I thought to myself why don't I go in for something like that. Well the reason I don't, is that you're going to be driving down the motorway and they'll be people looking at you in your flash car and all of a sudden you're gonna see somebody else who's in a better one, and all it is, is some sort of fuccking pecking order, and I don't want to get involved in that shit. I'd rather drop out and tune in. So the song is about people being together with a common identity. About people dropping out of the established order, y'know like the common identity of women, who feel like they don't want to be part of that "man's world" type thing and regain their own identity.

Gay Times - December 2003 - typed up by Sarah Canell - Thanks Sarah!

Gaze Time

The Beautiful South's Paul Heaton tells Richard Smith about an
eye-opening holiday in Sitges, being outed by The Sun, and the story
behind the new song, 101% Man.

Q: You wanted to talk to us?
A: Yeah,. I did. Partly because of one of the songs on the new album. I
thought you might be interested to see how I see things, perhaps
naively. I was quite interested in hearing your line on what I had to
say.

Q: Fair enough. Why did you write the song, 101% Man.
A: It was just something that somebody on Big Brother said. One of the
contestants announced they were gay, and this person said, "Oh great --
all my friends are gay!" And it really stuck in my throat as a really
bad cliché. It's a little bit like; "A lot of my friends are black,
but..." You know that something's gonna come after it. The first line of
the song tried to deal with that; just because you've nodded at a gay
man in the street, it doesn't mean you've necessarily got any gay
friends.

Q: I thought it was a straight man teasing his friends that they're
queer, but having these secret desires?
A: Ah, no. It's people saying they've got loads of gay friends, but they
actually find the thought of two men kissing far too odd. You get
occasional eye-openers in your life, and I've had a few of those. I went
on a package holiday to Sitges with my girlfriend about three and a half
years ago and a load of positives came out of that. One of the main
things was I met a friend of mine I knew from Hull, who I hadn't known
to be gay. He was there with his boyfriend and his boyfriend's friend,
and we spent a lot of time with them. What I was trying to get to in the
song was the prejudice that there are just two or three gay types of
men, when there are the whole lot.

Q: What does the line "There's no 101% man" mean?
A: I meant there are straight lads that think they're 100% hard, but
there is none of that; we all fall short in different ways. And there's
a lot more bravery in the person who stood up for himself than people
who think they're big men -- the sort of person who'd pick on these sort
of people. The crucial part of the chorus is, I find homophobia
cowardly. I've known gay people who are oblivious to insults. They've
come out quite early, and they're hard as nails. They're just like
"*whatever*!" I respect those people.

Q: In 1986, the Housemartins were "outed" by The Sun, weren't you? Even
though you're straight.
A: There was a thing about me, Norman [Cook] and Stan [Cullimore] all
being gay. There were two editions of the paper. There was an article in
the northern edition; it said Hugh was going to leave the band because
he was sick of the three of us bickering. And in the southern edition,
they said Stan's dad had spoken to them, and this was an awful way for
it to come out, and Jimmy Somerville, who's a close friend of the
family, has been an enormous support -- which was absolutely bizarre.
Stan's dad didn't talk to anyone. We'd all briefed our mums and dads not
to talk to the press, because we knew a campaign against [us] was
coming.

Q: I always thought it was an act of vengeance by The Sun, as The
Housemartins used to play a lot of benefit gigs for the sacked print
workers.
A: Yeah. I'm sure it was.

Q: I found a fan of yours on the net who's very worried. He remembers
you being outed, so he went through all your lyrics. He misheard a line
from Five Get Over Excited as "I'm a man from Scandinavia, I want a guy
in the London area..."
A: It's funny; there was a song on the first Beautiful South album, I
Love You But You're Boring. There's a line in it where it says "Bait
straight people." I was just meaning "straight" in general. And I got
two quite nasty letters about it, threatening me, saying "We don't mind
you being gay, but why do you have to force it on people?" Which is
another awful stereotype; it's one of the myths at the bottom of
homophobic feelings.

Q: Another fan reassured him; "You just have to look at the lyrics.
They're mainly about boyfriend/girlfriend relationships, tits and
self-consciousness about how fat one feels." True?
A: Most of them are about boyfriend/girlfriend situations, but not about
tits. Maybe 36D, but that wasn't really about tits. A lot of our songs
are left enough in the air to be construed both ways. Blackbird on the
Wire was about being in a relationship and wanting to get out of it. I
got a letter from some gay men in San Francisco, and they took it as
being still in the closet and not being able to express themselves. And
I looked back at the words and they just fit it -- apart from the first
line -- perfectly. I was chuffed about that, that they chose to
interpret it their own way. I forget what I'm on about, really, quite
often.

Q: How do you think people will react to this song?
A: The message of this song wasn't really to go out to gay people, it
was to straight people to question their own stereotypes. And think we
have a largely straight audience. We've played it just live twice and it
was an interesting reaction -- you get people punching the air and then
they'd hear what I was singing about and they'd stop. Their jaws
dropped a little bit.

Q: You've got a very blokey, quite laddie image, haven't you?
A: Yeah, I do, and that was one of the reasons why I thought it was
quite important for someone like me to sing this song. I have a laddish
outlook and I think it makes a bit of a change, someone like me singing
about something like this.

Uncut Magazin - January 2004 - typed up by Gina Dipper - Thanks Gina!

The Beautiful South singer on the blinding light of soul legend Al Green

I have dozens of records that changed my life but the first was Al Green’s Greatest Hits. Actually it was a cheap compilation, Spotlight On Al Green. I first heard it in 1983 and was completely entwined with it for the next two to three years. I was on the dole at the time and a bloke in the record shop persuaded me to buy it. I was really into more gospel-based soul singers like Wilson Pickett, but he kept insisting; “You’ve got to listen to Al Green. It’s not what he puts in that matters, it’s what he leaves out”.

Anyway I took the record home and fell completely in love with it. It wasn’t just the fact there’s a lot of brilliant songs on there – it was his unique Southern drawl. I’ve still not heard the original of “For The Good Times”, but the way he leaves gaps and adds vocals where there aren’t supposed to be any has been a massive influence on me and the way I’ve used my voice. You probably can’t tell as much listening to The Beautiful South, but when we started The Housemartins, I used to spend a couple of hours a day singing along to Al Green, trying to impersonate him. I have quite a high voice naturally, and I’d listen again and again, trying my ha rdest to follow him and hit the really high falsetto notes. I probably drove the rest of the band mad, but at the time they were quite happy to add in bits of soul and gospel. In fact “You” on the B-side of Flag Day” was a straight rip-off of an Al Green song from one of his religious records!

I’ve now got about 35 to 40 of his albums, but I still play that best-of the most. His versions of “Unchained Melody” and “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?” are just fantastic. I know a lot of people think of Al Green as shagging music, but I would never ever lower the piece of vinyl by doing something like that!