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Still with plenty to say after all these years Paul Heaton recently called it a day with Beautiful South. Jeff Hemmings took notes.

After 18-years, ten top ten albums and innumerable hits, Paul Heaton decided to call it day at a band meeting on 30 January 2008. The Beautiful South had proved to be one of the biggest bands of their time, with their trademark bittersweet, kitchen-sink dramas. “It was my decision,” says Paul, who is now striking out as a solo artist. “It was difficult to tell everyone, even the brass section! It was more of a social wrench, not a musical wrench. I was beginning to realise how many in-jokes and innuendos we had as a band – I just needed a change.”

Paul has a new album The Cross-Eyed Rambler, and there’s a short tour to back it up. “It’s great; with the Beautiful South we were getting a bit spoilt with hotels and such. Now it’s back to B&Bs,” he laughs. “I suppose there are plenty of good ones in Brighton!”

What does the album title refer to? “It’s about always coming back to the same place, forever going around in circles. I don’t mean to take the piss out of cross-eyed people – it’s a metaphor. The lyrics to the opening track go: ‘How short the long and winding road, how long the cul-desac/ Just like the cross-eyed rambler, we’ve been this way before.‘“

Lyrically, Heaton tells it like only Heaton does, but he detects a little bit more anger in his lyrics. “With The Housemartins (his first band, which also included his old friend Norman Cook) it was more us against them, and the songs are a bit like that again. It’s harder to track your enemies; they’re everywhere. TV is unbelievably depressing – there seems to be a bombardment of ads for faster cars and all the cooks, when tasting something, always say how amazing everything is.”

Paul is on the loose now, with a stream of observations about the current state of Britain that definitely show he’s not content, nor been bashed into submission by ‘modern life’. “‘Everything is Everything’ (one of the album’s highlights) is basically about my gripe with Britain, says Paul as if to close the subject. But no, here he comes again: “… we lost the right to protest once we became shareholders during the Thatcher era.

And there are just enormous amounts of faceless figures running our lives who we can’t vote out…” It’s classic Heaton stuff, and a strong reason why he has endeared himself to a huge fanbase built over the years. Another strong reason for his enduring popularity is that he appeals to a generally older audience, those with long-term relationships, for example.

Musically, there seems to be a tougher, more rockier approach to the new album. “With Dave Rotheray (Beautiful South co-writer), as he got older, he’d like to play everything slow. But with these new musicians they are up for rocking out a bit. We’re not exactly wigging out, but there’s a bit of an edge to the sound that we didn’t have with the Beautiful South.

Paul Heaton, Saturday 5 July, Komedia
The Cross-Eyed Rambler is out now

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 5:33 pm and is filed under Interviews, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.