Brighton Komedia provided the setting for Stuart Murdoch, lead singer of indie darlings Belle & Sebastian, to launch his debut novel Nobody’s Empire – a coming of age tale with several twists.

Ostensibly a work of fiction, Murdoch’s novel is actually very autobiographical with vivid descriptions of the “somewhat stricken Glasgow independent scene” at the start of the early 1990s, the period before Murdoch got his band together and recorded a classic run of albums starting with ‘Tigermilk’. The lead character ‘Stephen’ is clearly a version of Murdoch himself and the book is peppered with references to people drawn from the city’s indie scene as well as to the music they were listening to at the time. Another Stephen, Stephen Pastel of Glasgow indie rockers The Pastels, appears in two different guises. There’s a nice connection with the band The Sundays which I won’t give away, but it was touching for this particular reviewer as the first gig I took my current wife to was one by The Sundays in 1989. Apparently the band loved the book.

After Murdoch’s initial reading, he was interviewed by the Guardian’s Fiona Sturges. Why did Murdoch write a novel which was so clearly autobiographical? “Making it a novel gives you a freedom to inhabit the characters and be surprised by them.”

The conversation rapidly moved on to a key part of the story: Stuart/Stephen’s ME which was a long-time undisclosed but very important factor in Murdoch’s life. He said he felt lucky as he received a diagnosis quickly, which was unusual for the time. However, there was no obvious cure and it put a halt to his life for a number of years. This period included a three-month spell in a psychiatric hospital where he said he “found his people”. Murdoch likened ME to long COVID and the fear it brought “has never left”. But Murdoch considers himself lucky to have found ways to work through it and he is at heart a positive soul: “I’m a fearful person, but fear is rife in modern life.”

ME dominated Murdoch’s life even as a star of indie music track and field, and we learn it was “the reason the band never did tours or interviews in the early days”. Even more recently, it was a part of the reason the band had to cancel several tours. Murdoch said the coping mechanisms which worked particularly well for him included his Buddhism and Christianity, but he acknowledged that every sufferer’s experience of ME is different and what works for one person might not work for another.

Murdoch played a couple of songs solo, and they had added resonance in light of that preceding discussion. The lyrics to Belle and Sebastian’s first single, ‘Dog On Wheels’, seemed particularly apposite:

Now I’m feeling flat you seem a mile away
I’m so tired that down on the pavement I’ll lay
Till the blossom off the tree comes falling on me

And from Murdoch’s favourite Belle & Sebastian album, 2015’s ‘Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance’, the song which gives the novel its title also seems ME-relevant now:

Lying on my bed, I was reading French
With the light too bright for my senses
From this hiding place life was way too much
It was loud and rough round the edges…

Then there was time for questions from the audience.

Is writing a novel very different from songwriting? Yes, it is, he said. Writing a novel was more like a job whereas songs appear to come at you unpredictably “at funny times”.

An ME sufferer (and ‘happy Christian’) asked where Murdoch got his energy to be creative. He said he felt lucky in that he found a band who were supportive. But he was also very aware, as the Buddhists say, that life itself might be the fiction and what is more real are the thoughts in your head.

Murdoch said he travelled to California “to get warm” but that San Francisco “opened him up”. Initially a piano player, he only began to play guitar around 1995 when the band got together and he never felt he was much of a singer but “I just had songs pouring out of me”.

The final question was from another ME sufferer who asked how people can empathise with “someone like me”, a pretty heavy but important question to end on. Murdoch’s answer was as sensitive, sensible and compassionate as a Belle & Sebastian song lyric. When you have ME you might feel like your life is being wasted but he wanted to emphasise it is not. He said he felt that every human life is precious, and the coping with what life brings might be the whole thing or at the very least as important as any other kind of achievement.

Komedia, Tuesday 8th October 2024
Words by Jon Southcoasting
Photos by James Kendall