Um unsere zehn Fragen durchzubekommen, hätten wir wohl einen ganzen Abend benötigt, denn Damon Gough a.k.a. Badly Drawn Boy ist nicht gerade jemand, der auf Fragen mit einem knappen „Ja“, „Nein“, „Vielleicht“ antwortet, sondern als sprunghafter Geschichtenerzähler seine Gedanken detailverliebt und in langen Ausschweifungen ausbreitet - und dabei sehr interessante, intime und kuriose Erlebnisse und Einblicke in seine Persönlichkeit preisgibt.

Gleich zu Beginn outet er sich als ein sehr zweifelnder und grüblerischer Mensch, der – für einen Popstar sehr unüblich – sogar seine Existenz als Musiker in Frage stellt.

 

 

 

 

I am not a patriot, by any stretch of imagination. I am neither proud nor not proud of my origins. The song title itself came accidently. Because when I write songs I don´t really think about what the words are gonna be, I just make things up until something emerges that´s tangible. And on that particular song I only had one line which was the last line on the demo version which sounded like I was saying: I was born in the UK. It just sounded like that phrase. It actually probably wasn´t. But that´s what it suggested. So I went with the idea and then I started to think about what I could write the song about so I chose to write. I wrote several versions of different kind of  images from my memories of growing up and most of them ended up being ones of the 70ies, ´cause for some reason I think that was my first decade and I can remember certain things that stay with you for probably most of your life, and probably shape your ideas of who you are and things like that. So that´s what the song became and then – it was a long time after that – that I decided to call the album after that track, I just thought, well maybe it was meant to be. Because I didn´t think about doing it, it just happened. That´s the point.

 

“Born In The U.K.”, the title has got nothing to do with patriotism, it has to do with why I was born there, why was I not born somewhere else where I would have been grown up speaking a different language and doing something completely different in my life perhaps or being born somewhere I didn´t have any of those opportunities. So that´s what the album is more about. It´s about serendipity and chance and whether you choose your fate, whether you guide it or whether it´s pre determined or it´s a bit of both probably. That´s what the title refers to more as well as being a direct thank you tribute to Bruce Springsteen. And to my mum and dad for bringing me into the world and giving me a chance, all those kind of things.

 

 

I don´t know. I mean I am not saying I am dissatisfied with it, that´s not my point really. I am only saying I am questioning it, because if I hadn´t found music I would never have known I could do it. When I heard the song “Thunder Road” (Song von Bruce Springsteen, Anm.) when I was 14 it lead me onto some kind of path to be drawn more towards music. I wanted to be a sound engineer and record peoples music rather than make my own music. But that didn´t work out too well ´cause it was difficult to get yourself in the studio and learn. In a commercial studio it´s all about time and money. It was difficult to become a sound engineer so I started playing the guitar just to pass time on days when there wasn´t much to do.

So I slowly began to play the guitar and then I realized I could make up my own songs quite quickly. And even then when I did it just to pass time people said to me you should do this professionally, I said I am not  interested in it. So I just spent time in the bedroom with a 4 track recorder and in about 5 years I had thousand of songs but none of them were finished because I couldn´t be bothered to finish them or write the words. So I had hundreds or thousands of these demos flying about and then I met somebody, Andy Votel, probably one of the first people I played my music to and he said he wanted to start a record label. That was in 1997 and we put out an EP with about 500 copies, so I could see a record that had my music on it. And then 50 different record companies in England were asking me to do a record deal and I was still working a normal job. Then somebody asked me to do a gig, so I did a gig and again after that someone said, you do another gig, so I did another gig. Some people were telling me I was terrible, I couldn´t play live and I couldn´t sing, and still the record companies kept being interested.

 

There was one gig I did in Manchester that I was so scared of, because they said it was about 200 people coming from London to see you playing and I was headliner of the show, the Doves were playing and Clinic. So I asked Clinic if they headlined because I felt too scared, there was too much pressure, and then I played a video-tape of myself projected onto the stage saying I couldn´t make it to the gig. But I was standing in the audience with all these people watching this video of me playing. And I wish I had gone home after that but because I felt guilty I went on the stage and did a little bit, just played some tapes, handed out roses to the girls in the audience for a joke. And then I thought the record companies would stop, I thought I´ll just test what it was, what they really thought of me, and they still kept ringing the next day. So I told them what I´m about now and they were still interested so it just went on and on. Then I did a record deal and I put out all these albums, now it´s my 5^th album. So I had no time to stop to think about whether... I suppose I am old enough now to start wondering whether I could have been good at something else. I´ll never find out.

 

Everybody´s life is like that, it´s not like it´s depressing. Everybody could probably do something really well, but most people probably will never find it. If I had never found music, if I had gone to University for example instead of going to work when I was 16 or 17, I might have started getting good at something else. Because I usually was pretty good at anything I applied myself to. I wanted to be an animator, studio animation. Because I found music by change, I didn´t know anybody in bands, I wasn´t brought up in an area where they played music, there was no music in my family. So that´s why I wonder about it, why did it find me and why did I end up doing it, is that what I was meant to be doing? The album really is about all these things, all these questions. Why did I discover “Thunder Road”, why did it hit me so hard? That made me think... and then I went on listening to all of Springsteen´s music, for 4 years I was listening to nobody else. And then that made me think more about whether I could do it because I wanted to be like that.

 

 

I was probably 19 or 20 years old when I started playing the guitar. I always played with keyboards, I think I got my first keyboard when I was 10,11, just a Casio, a little keyboard, it was more of a gadget than an instrument the way I saw it. I remember trying to learn things like “Don´t You Want Me” by The Human League and things like that. I was just being fascinated by the sound. I must have bought my first real piano about the same time as learning the guitar. And I sat down and remembered from school what the notes on the musical scale were, just the stuff I was learning, like E G B D F and F A C E where the gaps are. So I remember that. And I bought some song books, and I wanted to learn to play “Thunder Road”. So I sat there. Trying to work out how to play the music and eventually learned to play, tought myself to play the whole album on the piano. So that helped me to learn how the piano worked. And I started to write my own songs. I slowly grew more fascinated by the fact that I could actually write a song when nobody had showed me how, so I just followed it. And then when people started to get interested I was just amazed that people were interested in it. I wish it had happend sooner for me. It was most of my 20ies discovering how to do it and then my first album came out when I was 30 so I´m just wondering why it happend still.

 

 

It´s usually split between guitar and piano. I think I was immediately drawn to guitar and piano as tools rather than instruments. I don´t consider myself to be a good guitarist or a good pianoplayer, but I´m getting better by perseverance and practice. I would more refer to myself as a songwriter really. Lou Reed for example may not be the best guitarist or the best singer but the combination of what he does makes him a good songwriter with his own character. People can critizise Bob Dylan for not having a great singing voice but he actually, like he says in the film “Don´t Look Back”, he got a pretty good voice, he can hold his breath, he says in the film, he can sing along notes. It stands to peoples objectivities really. Dylan got an amazing singing voice and he´s changed over the years. Not to put myself within that company as saying I´m as good as those people. (lacht) But I think there is a similarity, e.g. I would never win “X Factor” (TV Talenteshow, vergeichbar mit “Starmania”, Anm.) and neither would Bob Dylan. But he´s a real artist and so am I. The thing about being a real artist is you ignore convention and all technical things. It´s just about making something feel good and feel right and expressing yourself rather than trying to do what other people do and that´s the key. That´s what I am interested in doing and you know if I walked on to “X Factor” auditions they´d probably send me home before I even get a chance to sing. Which I´m quite proud of really. (lacht)

 

 

I don´t really know about that name anymore. I don´t know if it´s an coincidence that I mentioned animation because that is something I always liked and thought I would be good at. I enjoy the idea of doing simple animations, something I´ve always admired as a skill. So maybe it was subliminal, that it was connected to chosing the name Badly Drawn Boy. Again the name came by total accident. I was in a coversation with a friend of mine one night and he told me about this children´s cartoon that had been on TV. And there was a character, that was really upset, because it wasn´t finished off and all the other characters were, and he was upset about it. And I think we just made up the name based on that character. Because I liked the sense of it at that time. It was 1997, nearly 10 years now, which is bit of a scary thought. But a name becomes a name after a while, it just becomes something people associate your music with.

For me it´s having a name to work under rather that using Damon Gough which I´ve know all my live. I think having a new name to work under perhaps gave me something to aspire to. To me it represents something about what the music is, it means it can do anything, it means the music can go anywhere, there´s no restriction. Certain bands names imply a certain kind of music. I think Badly Drawn Boy doesn´t really imply a certain kind of music to me. And because I´m a solo artist that again means that I can be more eclected than perhaps a band can be. That´s on the positive side. On the down side with solo artists I think sometimes it´s harder for people to associate themselves to you because you´re on your own. With bands, people tend to associate themselves with bands because it´s a group thing. I think, psychologically. I think solo artist ia a harder thing. I know it means that you can still carry on when you´re older because you still play songs when those bands will look silly if they did perhaps. (lacht) So it has got it´s upsides and downsides. But the name for me initially gave me an idea to work towards. I can´t tell you what that is because it was completely surreal and impersonal and difficult to explain. But it gave me an idea of what the music is that I do. It probably wouldn´t be any different if I changed to another name so that´s why I say it´s hard to explain because it doesn´t really mean much.  

 

 

I don´t know, it amazes me sometimes when people say “oh yeah this band sounds a bit like Badly Drawn Boy”, but what would that be? What would somebody that sounded like me sound like? Because I don´t think I have ONE particular sound. Is it the melodies I use, or the words combined with those melodies... I suppose it´s like I said, it´s having your own thing that you do that you can´t really see because it´s you. I don´t know what my sound is. And it´s changing, it´s constantly evolving and there´s things I can do I haven´t done yet with music. So hopefully by the end of 10 or 15 albums if I get that that far nobody will be able to ever say what Badly Drawn Boy music is like because it is so varied. I hope, maybe... (lacht)