I decided I was going to do the complete opposite of Felt. In Felt, we never talked to the audience, never interacted. But Denim, I thought, “We’ll put on a show.” But I didn’t want to play live until we had a hit. I was waiting until I had the budget to do a proper show. But we never had the hit single.
Denim’s mission statement was “Middle of the Road,” where you vow to throw all the received rock canon—Stones, Beatles, Chuck Berry—in the garbage can. “Spector’s Wall, knock it down.” And you’re opening up pop history to stuff that was then disregarded—the low-brow, bubblegum, non-Bowie end of glam.
I felt like there must be loads of people like me who don’t like early Bob Dylan or Jerry Lee Lewis—all that stuff you’re supposed to feel reverential about. The song was me saying, “I’m not scared to admit I like middle-of-the-road pop.”
With Go-Kart Mozart and now Mozart Estate, you continue with the tacky glitter influences, but there’s also some New Wave pop-punk in there. Even a bit of Cockney music hall meets musical theater.
Lionel Bart is my hero. My generation, we all love Oliver!. When I started to read up on him, I thought, “Gosh, I feel pretty close to this guy.” Because I’m not a great musician, and he couldn’t play piano properly. He wrote all his songs on the black notes.
The first Mozart Estate album, Pop-Up! Ker-Ching! and the Possibilities of Modern Shopping was originally going to be called Poundland, after a UK chain of shops where everything costs only £1—like America’s 99-cent stores. There’s songs like “Relative Poverty” about having to live on subsistence-level income and “Lookin’ Thru Glass,” which is about window shopping for all the consumer goods you could never afford. It’s a darkly funny concept album about consumerism.
A lawyer told us you’ll have to change the title, as Poundland love going to court. But I wasn’t making fun of the store—I love the place. Although they’ve started to have things that sell for £2, which made some people angry!
And now the new Tower Block in a Jam Jar consists of older songs redone with a full band and sharper production.
In 2005, at a time when I couldn’t get arrested, Go-Kart Mozart did an album called Tearing Up the Album Chart. It only came out on CD, and if it’s not on vinyl, it doesn’t feel like a real release to me. But I always thought those songs were neglected.
So now you’re in a position where you could get arrested, you decided to rework them?
This album is for people who read Street-Level Superstar and thought, “I really like that guy. I like the idea of what he’s up to.”
There are songs about record collectors into overpriced obscure prog rock albums (“Fuzzy Duck”, “Listening to Marmalade”) and a punky little tune about teenage miscreants titled “Transgressions.”
I just never grew up. I still think I’m 15. I’m not interested in people my own age, like politicians. I’m interested in teenagers and what they get up to. This song is making fun of them because they think they are so tough. A guitarist I know worked as a social worker at a home for bad boys. He told me one time they went on a trip to the seaside and the kids, to get high, sprayed the deodorant Lynx on their tongues. They go crazy on it.
Talking of refusing adult responsibilities, you have an anthem for the work shirkers of the world, “Selfish & Lazy & Greedy,” sung from the point of view of someone enjoying a nice lie-in while the wage slaves are out there toiling at ungodly hours. Have you managed to avoid gainful employment your entire life?
Actually, I had a great job in the early days of Felt, working in a theatre in Birmingham. I was what was called a cellar man, working in the bowels of the building. I actually think having a job and doing a band works really well at the start, because it focuses you. It really sharpens you in terms of how you use what time you have.
But all I have ever wanted to be is a professional musician. And I kind of am now, but it’s taken me many, many years.
