Former member of Magazine, Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds and a longtime creator of cinematically-themed albums, Barry Adamson is soon to release his first studio album since 2016’s Know Where To Run and head out on a UK and European tour, that will include Brighton Komedia on Thursday 23rd May.
We spoke with Barry on a rainy April morning about his new album, an iconic London cinema and his eclectic career.
Congratulations on the new album, ‘Cut To Black’, which I loved. What can you tell us about the inspiration behind it?
Thanks. It’s lots of things really and the culmination of a lifetime of work. I’ve gone through different communities, a career in different forms of music and film, and I feel like they’ve all come together with a certain leaning to more of a black music idiom. The whole idea through the thing as it grew was it was almost like a portrait as well and having written a memoir and carrying on using the ideas of a character looking at different aspects through their eyes. Also looking at the world in general and things coming to a close – like the record coming to a close or like a film coming to a close, you know “Cut To Black” and it’s done. So I was taking in all these different aspects and influences and looking at my own stuff through that as well.
Did the album begin during lockdown?
No, it was post-lockdown. During lockdown I was putting together a couple of EPs and my memoir so that was the focus then. There was a gap after where things started to build a bit and I wanted to do something different from where I’d been before and try to look at things through another window in some way. I just write anyway, so I had around twenty-odd ideas and some things started to fall away and some stayed and I thought something’s happening here.
‘The Last Words Of Sam Cooke’ was the first concrete idea and this led me into this 50s/60s style of black music and being able to use my, hopefully, powers in terms of what the lyrics are going to say and how I’m going to discuss what the last words of Sam Cooke were. It spawned from there really.
Sam Cooke’s death is an infamous case isn’t it, regarding what actually happened that night at the motel?
Yeah but I guess my angle was to put myself in Sam Cooke’s shoes and see what it was like from his side. Everyone knows about the motel and the women involved and what happened but I was thinking what was going through his mind. I’m taking an incredible amount of poetic licence and describing myself as the character of Sam Cooke, which of course I’m nothing like, and I decided to give myself that role, if you like.
I could definitely hear elements of Sam Cooke and Wonderful World in the song.
There’s a little bit of the melody. I had a chord sequence and I think I had that for the first part (voices the opening line of Wonderful World) then it stops there. And of course to try and put yourself in the vocal world of Sam Cooke would be a big mistake. As a singer, his tonality, the phrasing and his way of staying just a little bit behind the beat was just incredible so I didn’t really want to do that but I wanted to, at least, reference it – adopt and adapt what was going on in the song.
I’m not really a Sam Cooke aficionado so I’m not sure how the song came to me. It wasn’t like one day I’m going to tell Sam’s story, I was remembering ‘(What A) Wonderful World’ because this kid at school used to sing it all the time in History and I started to hear it here and there, like ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ in documentaries. So, something got inside my head like a strange visitation of an idea to do something and then just running with it. I’m a huge fan now.
On ‘Demon Lover’ you return to ‘The Man With The Golden Arm’ riff.
I like to have it as a little bit of a signature and I guess I’m reminding myself who I am in the process. The signature becomes like the coat I’m wearing, I’m talking about my own version of slaying demons and walking away with the woman who becomes the love of my life. You know, that sort of thing. It’s a portrait song that describes the result of my intentions and using little markers as identifiers.
‘Manhattan Satin’ has a lovely Muscle Shoals keyboard sound. Is that you?
I played or put together or sampled or found or whatever it is on every track on the album. I’m a true solo artist on this album. It’s weird because I did ask some people to come in but it never happened so I thought I’d better get on with it. It was just one of those beautiful things that come along where you just put three notes on the keyboard and move your little finger up. It’s funny because I was thinking of Beck’s ‘Loser’ at the time, funnily enough, so it had that riff in it and thought it was a cool keyboard movement in that phrase that became the whole song.
The album closes with the grandiose 6-minute, Get Carter/60s spy film sounding “Waiting For The End Of Time”. As soon as I heard I thought this would make a great James Bond theme song.
Really? Wow, I didn’t think of it that way at all. I thought I’ll take a personal moment and express some grief and write this theme. I never know how to take ‘grandiose’ or if it’s a good thing or not.
It’s a compliment and also the name of the song would make a great Bond film title.
I guess so, but it’s funny to put it in that frame. I’ll look at it differently when I listen to it again. I suppose along the way you get influenced by all these things. As I was saying earlier, all the different experiences I’ve had through bands and films, and the world of fandom, like John Barry, so maybe these things creep in without you even realising.
You feature in, and wrote the music for, the new Scala!!! documentary. What are your memories of the infamous Kings Cross cinema?
That’s all in the film so you’ll have to watch it. It was a place of education where you could meet like-minded people and feel you were a part of this tribe. You could see that people there were being affected by what was being shown, in terms of aspirational ideas that they would then go off with and work on. You could sense that these were people like myself.
For me, the huge thing was The Man with the Golden Arm. The Scala was where I first saw it, then re-saw it several times, whether it was a Sunday afternoon or the middle of the night I was there, so that was the film that made me think that’s the kind of music I want to do; that’s the atmospheres I want to try to create, even though I knew nothing about scoring films, other than trying to work within the song structures of the bands I was in and to add a certain element of that to it. So that was the huge thing for me with The Scala documentary and it was such a pleasure to score because I felt I could write with some experience and knowledge now, from the inside out and it all came together quite quickly. I was working on ‘Cut To Black’ then I’d stop and work on The Scala film, then I’d pick up ‘Cut’ and it kind of helped because there was a distinguishing tone between each project, rather than it all blurring together, so it became very specific to the time. I felt I was able to get the right tone for the different scenes.
How did you learn how to score for films?
It was a case of trying to express the ideas that come into your head and then listening to other things. I had a book by (legendary film composer) Henry Mancini called ‘Sounds And Scores’, which was almost like a guide to orchestration, within the jazz idiom, which taught you to follow pieces of music to learn why instruments go where. Mainly it’s just listening to other people. You can listen to Ennio Morriccone and see why he’s doing that but to work out what is actually going on – I mean, he knew how priceless his arrangements were so he would keep them in safes under lock and key because he didn’t want anyone to see how he put the sounds together. Although a lot of it is the same punk approach and simply to have a go at it with trial and error and figure it out as you go along. I think that the punk experience I had gave me incredible self-belief in putting something together out of nothing.
I was surprised to see you acting in Peter Strickland’s superb horror film ‘In Fabric’.
So was I! It happened through a casting agent that suggested me to Peter and he knew of my work. He called me up and said “I’m doing this film and would you be up for doing something?” and, I wasn’t giving too much away but I was like “wow, his stuff is so brilliant” so I was well up for giving it a go. I actually found it more difficult than I thought I would because I thought being in a film would be, you play someone so opposite to who you are, where you act out this character and do all this stuff you hear actors talk about. Really it was just going on there and talking and being yourself, which was quite difficult to do because you are saying things that you wouldn’t say but you’re pretty much being the person you are. People said to me “no, you don’t come across like that at all, you come across as this guy who’s pretty empathetic to this woman who’s going through all this stuff with the dress” and I thought OK, phew. It was an honour and an incredible privilege.
Are you likely to team up again?
I’ve no idea, we speak from time-to-time but I don’t know how these things work. I’ve not been offered anything else.
Are you looking forward to taking the album on tour?
Yeah, to get the songs out there and see the response in people’s eyes is another layer, another level again. I think the record’s pretty good and I’m hoping that people show up and embrace it, so it’s a bit of an unknown but I’m looking forward to it.
Is Brighton a good city for you?
Yeah, of course I lived there for a few years so I feel there’s some sort of rootage there and I’m always happy to hit the coast.
Barry Adamson will be performing at Komedia Studio on Thursday 23rd May, supported by Nadine Khouri. Full details and tickets are available here.
