Clint Boon saw Manchester lift off twice and auditioned the young Noel Gallagher

0:00You're watching or listening to Word in Your Year, of course you are, as you're never alone with a show that lights upon everything ever invented in the art of conversation. Whether that's regrettable rock and roll footwear, daft things audiences do, epic stage names, tracks to play at wedding parties or the outer limits of El McGantry's velvet opera. Do leave a like or subscribe by going to patreon.com slash Word in Your Year to discover further delights on offer. And now get stuck into this. You're listening to a podcast from the Word. Was anybody's musical life as closely connected to the place they came from? Clint Boons. He's called his memoir Manchester Chronicles and it's a rattling account of being at the heart of what he calls the two biggest musical revolutions of my lifetime.

1:03Clint, very nice to see you. Nice to see you Mark and David, nice to meet you after all these years. It is. We're loving the shirt with the wavy lines. We thought there was kind of vision problem at first but there it is. It works. Do you not adjust your set? It's from Mark's and Spencer's. This is M&S. There you go. We've all settled down on Mark's and Spencer's. That's where we live. Fair enough. Now they're wrong with that at all. They're wrong with that at all. So Clint, yeah, you were lucky enough to be there for both kind of big waves really in Manchester. You were there for the joy division and the buzz cocks and later on for Hasseander and Stone Roe's, Oasis, etc. So what is it about the place that makes it or made it so vibrant at that time? I think I have to start by saying the people.

2:04I've asked a lot why Manchester's the way it is. The people are quite outstanding. I think we've had a very warm community of people up here. Well when somebody does come along with a crazy idea, like having a band called Buscocks and making quirky pop songs that are all around the edges, everybody bought into it. We subscribe to each other's madness, I think, up here. I think the geography helps that they were quite central in the British Isles. So we get a lot of people come into the place and that includes touring bands, obviously. Some cities are sometimes a bit out on a limb, so I think they miss out on certain cultural things. And historically, the fact that it was a port or it was a port and there's an airport here. We've been lucky enough to have great music from around the world, landing in our city for decades, since the 40s and 50s probably.

3:06So I think all those things combine to what makes the place special. I like touring with Elston used to say as well, like part of our reason for being quite obsessive about music is the weather, you know, because we all grew up. It was raining too hard to go and play out, so you just sit inside the mixing team and want me to have Shirley Bussie record again. You know what I mean? Literally, it was like that stuff that I was when I was a kid. I think I was a major peril of global warming actually, is that people might no longer stay indoors. Quite so often. Yeah. Yeah, good, good observation. Yeah. Listening to music. So, hey, do you remember the first music you listened to as a home as a child of what kind of, can you remember the record player that he had at home or anything like that? Yeah, we had initially, we just had the all-done set style thing, but then we bought a great studio gram in the late 60s, a beautiful wooden cabinet thing. I can remember the records, my moment and dad, I think like a lot of people, they didn't

4:07have a massive record collection. Probably I'm guessing maybe 30 albums or so, but there were all the key albums at the time, which all me mates, mums and dads had the same records. And I still see people of my generation. Now, when they talk about the Mum and Dad's record collection, they all had the Tom Jones album, Shirley Bussie, a Beatles album, used as a blue album. And then a lot of weird stuff like we had a pinky and perky album that we used to play. Oh, well, good. And then a band called Gary Lewis and the Player Boys that, to me, was a massive album. Gary Lewis was the son of Julia Lewis, the American comedian. Yeah. And you had this band that was like a, if you live, if I want to sound a bit cruel, it was like a poor man's beach boys. An amazing vocal harmony group. But that record was just one of my most influential albums as a kid growing up. And didn't Lee Young Russell arrange Gary Lewis and the Player Boys?

5:09I think he probably did. And you know what? I don't know. I think you probably find it's full of stellar side men, you know? Yeah, totally. Absolutely. But it's a brilliant record. It's got things called just my style. Don't you know that you're just my star? And that was like, I've never heard anybody else talk about that band, but to me, it was like, whoa, it's one of my albums growing up. So we had the, you know, the modest, but influential record collection that was my moment dance. But then the radio was a big thing. You know, the radio was always on and it was, you know, listening to records on the studio, or on the meds, when we had a radio, a big, all night and 40s thing that we vowels in and each of smell beautiful. And then I remember like being in front of that and you know, man-fried man for the first time in the late of 60s. I was born in 59, so, you know, music. I can remember being seven, eight, nine, you know, old and being in love with Elvis and little Richard and Jury Lee.

6:09So when I did eventually start buying me on records, I started to collect a lot of the rock and roll artists on vinyl. And I've still got them all over the proper hoarder. May I still get everything I ever bought? There's a little comment in the boat that you said earlier, and you said, my most of my favorite records are great stories set to great music. So it gives an example of records with great stories. I like that idea. Why are the people? Yeah. Yeah. Bridge over to the water is a beautiful song with a beautiful... I don't know if you call it a story, but it's definitely got a theme and a meaning and a thread to it that I love. Johnny Cash, I remember listening to Johnny Cash when I was a kid, we had the Johnny Cash false and prison blues. I listened to boy named Sue, probably eight when I first heard it and just, what a song, you know, of a vast story, what story. So stuff like that always, always, always, as far back as I remember, the story was the key thing in a record.

7:10I love your, you go way back in your book and you talk about being at school. You had a school teacher, you used to lend out records to that right. It was a piece of rather record library, thank to the lead. So it's a geography teacher, PK Murphy, still alive apparently. I've not seen him since I left school but a friend of mine is an air breeze. But yeah, yeah, this, this, this same thing, to the side of the geography class was like a little storeroom and he had a selection or a section of his own record collection in there. And he'd let us rent out, you could take up to three albums a week. So you can't see him on the Monday morning before class started and, you know, I remember on the first, so he's 1970 when I started that school. And on the first visit to his record library, I took out a King Crimson album so that I think it would have been caught at the Crimson King, because I'm an old, yeah, yeah, yeah. And a Stepple Molf album.

8:11Because I wasn't into rock, I didn't know anything about rock, I've still been rock and roll kid. You know, I was still listening to Bill Early in the comments and, you know, Jury Lee. So I thought, because I can borrow these records for nothing, this man's going to lend me his records. So the first week, I took three rock albums out. I can't remember what the third one was. It might be in Bad Company. I think it was a sensational Alex Harvey bag. Well, that was a bit later. That was art college. I got a call with it. I did scuba that at art college, which was, again, that was, I mean, that was a different chapter. Again, because it's school, it was a grammar school. It was an old boy's grammar school in Middleton, just outside Manchester. And I didn't have a great time. I didn't really, I didn't really thrive in that five-year period. Certain aspects of it, like the record library, the PK Murphy, I didn't need the art teacher. He was also called Mr Murphy. But yeah, there's certain little pockets of brilliance in that environment that I loved. Generally, grammar school wasn't for me. It wasn't the best time of my life. And then I went to art college in Rochester, which was the other end of the spectrum.

9:13Not for me. It was amazing. Right. So what was it like out in those days? Was it relatively easy to get in? In those days. I got in pisses in me just because when I left grammar school, all the other kids knew what they were going to do with the lives. So I'd, you know, into use lined up at colleges or jobs. And I didn't really plan what was going to do next. So summer 1975, I left grammar school. And the first couple of weeks of the summer, I didn't have a clue what was going to do. And then I heard about one of my mates was going to an art college in old. And he just started at the Older Mark College I got signed up. So I thought, looking to that, I couldn't not like it, I'm quite art. And I mean, for some of my mates to get in at Rochester, I like college a couple of weeks notice. And that was like, when I looked back, I've got that place in art college. I don't think my story would have been the same. I don't think I'd have been talking to you now. You know, it was a perfect environment for me to be in for what happened next,

10:16which was punk, punk up and next. I was in the art college 16, 7, just turned 17-year-old. And the punk thing started to, I threw 75 from I remember, sorry, 76. Early 76, we had the remones album that popped up. And that was like nothing we'd ever heard or seen. And we had it in the art college, like the Open Plum class studio. And somebody bought this album and it was like, wow, what is this? You know what I mean? It's mind blowing. There was playing while you were doing your sketching or whatever. Oh yeah, because it was all, we don't be doing like, somebody would be playing potry clay, like somebody doing oil paints. And so when you went to turn the record, everybody always got full of all whatever medium we were playing with. So these records, they didn't last long, you know, they last. Like when the sex pistols brought, I would, I know, kid, that was like, we went through about seven copies out in the first two weeks. Because it was like just playing endlessly. And it was like just, it kept just getting destroyed with the clay and, you know, glue.

11:19So we'd nip off into Rochdale town center and buy another copy if they had any left. So then when you go to the electric circus, I think it is in December 1976, and you saw where I'm the bill was, I think sex pistol, the clash, the buzzcocked. And it's like it's like a scene from a biopic, you know, you see these groups and you say, it's completely life-changing. In fact, the next day, you say, left college, didn't you? So before that, you've been running a mobile disco, playing or whatever the mid-70s music was that you liked, you know. It was obviously a, just a massive shift for you. Yeah, totally. I mean, the mobile disco, we bought the equipment towards the end of 1975, me and two friends of mine. And then we started doing local DJ sets for weddings, both their parties, and we did a lot of Irish nights as well, bizarrely. Because one of the lads in the disco, it's family were Irish. And it's one of the most used to put on these Irish nights in Royton. So we'd gone play all this traditional Irish music and everybody would jigging about. And then, but yeah, we're playing a lot of the disco,

12:21well, the charts of the day, you know, a lot of the stuff from the 70s, and a lot of the glam music, we played a lot of the, you know, the roux bets and modern suite. And I used to love Shuaadi, I did it, one of my favourite bands at the time. I was obsessed with them. And it was all of my punk came along, that sort of, I mean, you know, you're in 24 hour party people. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's the same way they see the pistols. And then it's the next day, and it's Alan, the actor playing Alan Erasmus. And he's ripping his porses off the wall, like boy, porcelain's gone, must go. Must go. Must go. And it was like that when punk happened. It was like, I just moved on overnight, because that was like, where I'd been embracing 50s rock and all before that, which was a movement I was never going to be part of. I was never going to see Bill Eilie live, you know what I mean? But when punk happened, it was like, that's rock and roll for me now, that's my rock and roll, and I'm having it. And that included binning off a lot of the glums, stuff that I was into as well. I was going to say you had a huge pile of roux bets records. You just get rid of them,

13:24I mean, you build a funeral pyre. Yeah, no, actually, Shuaadi, I think all their records, singles and albums. Under the moon of love. Look at that. Fantastic. I'm still loving them. I don't, I've never embarrassed to tell people they are still one of my most influential bands of all time, because there's a little teddy boy, you know, like I said, being born in 59, I was 1415, 1974, 1975, and Shuaadi, they weren't just like another glam band that were inspired by 50s music. They were dressed in the park, you know what I mean? And they had the bottle of the coat. Oh, they were amazing. And there were two bands that had become one were they? The back story was a man. There were two competes in rock and roll, not tribute bands, but yeah, revival bands. In, is it less to recover into the from? I bet they were. So, yeah. But they became the idea that there's two people here together in some small corner of a foreign field talking about Shuaadi Woody. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It can't be, it can't be many of us right now. And having mentioned Gary Lewis in the play boys, he won't get that.

14:26Yeah, very good. Very good. But clearly the kind of appearance of things was an important part of the, the offering for you, you know, did you, do you revolutionise your appearance in the weight of punk? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that, yeah, definitely, because before punk, it was like, I think I still had Flaude Jeans. Yes. And then in Wrangler, Jackie, I think, and but yeah, when punk arrived, it was like almost overnight, everything changed, you know, I don't even, but I think, but one point I couldn't afford to buy Dremppite Pants, I got my Flaude and took them in. Took them in? Yes. And stored them down the, down the, down the side. So, it's a lot of that going on, because I'm still, I was at college, I wasn't earning any money, and you know, I would completely support him. So, yeah, I mean, like a lot of kids, we're just fashioned our own new uniform to suit the punk, look, you know, and we started cutting our own owners, which is bizarre. You know, you literally just cut your own ear before you went into college or whatever.

15:27Yeah, we were scoffy, but we were happy. We were happy, we were happy. Were you, were you kind of natural leader of people around? Were you, you're trying to be as the kind of person who said, let's do this, let's try that. Were you that kind of person? I don't, I don't remember being like that. I remember being the class clown at school. You know, I was always the one that was getting the, the co-apal punishment, you know, the strap across the and or the training shoe across the ass or a board duster throwing at me. There was a lot of that going on, and it was usually because I wasn't an nasty kid. I just used to like making mimex laughs, I'll be burping and farting, and you know, all that kind of stuff. So, just, yeah, I don't, but I won't call that being a leader. No, I was just a pure exhibitionist. I was just an exhibitionist, definitely. So, what did you do when you left at college? Well, you know, what, hadn't you occupied your time? So, I saw the pistols deciding that there's no point going to university or whatever else they had in mind. Because I think before seeing the pistols, it was like I was thinking of becoming an art teacher

16:30ultimately or an artist, sort of a photographer or something. But once I saw the pistols, it was like time to drop out and get, get a job, get someone to start buying equipment and being around bands and learning about the music, you know, the world of music, which is what I wanted to do. So, the first thing I did when I got out of art college was then got a job in the local sheet metal factory. Because the money was really good. It was very dangerous work and quite depressing and, you know, it'd be really dark, but yeah, it gave me enough money to start buying, you know, more records, musical equipment. And that's when I started collecting keyboards and drum machines and tape recorders and stuff to make sounds with, you know. And then you were more of a producer first to some extent, weren't you? Oh, definitely, yeah. That's how you got involved with the Inspiral College. I think I wanted you to produce something. The lovely description there where you're kind of given this kind of, it's almost like a test

17:31and they ask you about all these psychedelics, you know, late 60s bands, you know, question mark and steering stuff. As if you've got to pass this test to get in. Why was it so obsessed with all that, with all those bands? I think, yeah, I'd also see it as a test. I think it was like we opened up, we each opened up about what we're into. And it turned out that particularly with Graham Lumber, the guitarist and the Inspirals, because they were already a band, there were four piece band that came to me, so I could record a demo tape for them in my little studio. And once we started talking and, you know, we started, our site's on at the seeds and the 30 floor elevators and Jefferson Earth playing and Graham was into all that music as well. And then, you know, the bands, the eights psychedelic bands, you know, people like the prisoners, John, that kind of stuff. So we had, we had 100% the same test in music. And that's... And those bands in the frame at that time. Why were you all... Why were all those bands kind of in the frame at that time? Why were you also interested in them?

18:36Probably because it wasn't like what was in the charts. It was all the worldly. And for me, you know, I mean, growing up in the 60s, I just... I still love the 60s vibe and the 60s music, you know, and I try to tell a star, it still just gets me so excited today, you know, just... If you put it on now, the others would be standing up on my arms and, you know what I mean? It just moves me, it moves me. That particular generation of music in the 60s, the science fiction stuff, the theme tune stuff, still resonates with me today, as much as I ever did. So I think, yeah, it's honestly a question. I think we once we realized that myself and Graham and the other Inspirals, once we realized we're all carved out as, Chunka Rock, we just... We became the Inspirals, as you know, today, really, with the organ and everything that went with it. And another major change point is when you have the bowlhead haircut. And it's, you know, I'm looking back at the great people in the past that are the Joe and

19:36Alomley, Brian Jones, Johnny Ramone, Bully Beef, Deep Greenfield, the Stranglers, were certain people that it's a very specific look, because they're damn and all of them later on, actually. But why did you go for that? It's interesting. I think part of it, because it's what, you know, some of the musical heroes that are, you know, the storms, by and by, and by, by, you know, the storms, obviously, the birds, you know, a lot of the, you know, Jefferson Irpland, a couple of ballads in that band. And it just a look that I really liked, it what nobody else was doing it in Manchester, but as far as I was aware in 1984, 85 when I first had it done. I think I went through a few years of just not wanting to look like anybody else, and not wanting to wear what everybody else's were, and you just... I don't know what that says about me, probably just, I don't know, attention seeker, probably. Yes, so the ballad came as part of that, the ballad, the white jeans, wearing a pocket watch around me, not going to big gold chain, purple, winkle, picker boots. It was just like, I just didn't want to look like anybody else in

20:39old and in 1985, you know what I mean? The book is, you know, it covers a long period of time, and one of the interesting things about it is loads of characters just appear when you least expect in them, and two of them are the Gallagher brothers. It's priceless stuff now, isn't it? So can you briefly summarize their interaction with the Inspiral Carp. Yes, I joined the Inspiral, it was end of 1986. We were very busy on the local music scene, doing all the gigs, and then we started doing stuff around the UK, but I think probably the early 1988, we first started seeing this young lad coming to our gigs called Noll, Noll Gallagher, and it was a fun of the band, and we used to, you know, would hang out with him, he'd come in the dressing room and hang out, and he had a little brother Liam and another brother Paul. So we got to know them all, and there was sort of omnipresent, you know, especially around the Manchester gigs that we were doing. And the world you're seeing is obviously well into the races and the Mondays and

21:45everything else that's going on. But Noll was the first person, when Stephen Alltower of original singer, who's now our current singer, when he left the band towards the end of 1988, Noll was the first person to say I'd like to audition to be a singer. Are you auditioned, didn't you? Yeah. Can you remember that? vividly, I was going to say vividly, it was on the 21st of December 1988, it was the night of the Lockerby disaster. So we auditioned Noll early in the evening, well we started to audition early in the evening. I mean, basically the reason we didn't take him on, I'll come to Lockerby in a minute, the reason we didn't take him on was that we didn't think his voice was strong enough to replace Stephen's voice. You know what I mean, he could sing, no, he could sing, and it was, he was a right area of some songs that he'd written, but he didn't have the kind of bellowing voice that we needed. But we liked him a lot, we already knew him a bit from coming to the gigs, but we just had looked to come and work with us, be our rodine, or be our PA, be our Alpers with the merchandise,

22:47mail outs or whatever. And that's how we ended up with Noll in our camp for the next four years or so. But then he went back to the audition, so it was, we started with Renational Deline, which is where the mill was, that's where we rehearsed and where my studio was. The Lockerby plane, it turned out, would have flown over the table, so I don't know, it was on the flight path. And what happened with my memory of it was we finished the rehearsal, and then I got back in Macar outside, outside the mill on the street, and John Peel was just finishing his show. And his last link, he said something like, I'll be back tomorrow, we're on for more of the same, next it's time to go to the newsroom to see if there's anything left to Scotland. That's pretty much how we ended the show that night. And then this news story came on, obviously. And it was quite a profound moment really, but the fact that when all that was going on, that was the exact moment that Noll was stood singing with the Inspiral Capits.

23:51And it was, you know, it happened next to those Noll, we had a great four years together, it was great company all the time, he didn't get a sweat on very often, you know what I mean, it was like, usually time gets somebody else to do the hard work, but great member of the team, and it was a big, you know, it's very loyal, a big fan of what we did, you know, at the time. And you know, since that four years, he's always given us credit for showing him how we were operating, you know, he saw a lot behind the scenes stuff that say, I'm going to say the Oasis tour did spectacularly well out of merchandise. Did he learn all that in the Inspiral Capits because you were leaders in that? I think, you know what, going back to the money first joined Oasis, I think Danny might use a lot of that knowledge and, you know, experience, but I think what you just saw the other year was pretty exceptional. Yes, it was really interesting that early on, you know, the band were living on your, on your merchandise sales. We were. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. So how near economy really?

24:56Wasn't it? Well, we had the foresight or the stupidity to not just take the first record deal we were offered, you know, we were like, old and old and old and out for as long as we could, because I think we realized that, you know, the more established we could be when the record companies came knocking on our door, the more we could work, you know, a better deal, a great record deal that was beneficial for us. So for a period, we were like making money just off t-shirt sales and cassette sales, you know, we were doing cassette tapes and selling them and that first album, but I was going to release an album called Life in early 1990 and it got to number two in the the album chart. Yeah. Kept off number one by the Carpenter's greatest estates, which was always going to be a number one album on it. We got number two, which was amazing. And another Carpenter's fun, anyways, I don't mind being number two to them. But that album was recorded, you know, by abandoning a backstreet in Manchester and paired for purely with profits from selling

26:00t-shirts and cassette tapes and it was it got to number two. It was a gold record, it was a gold record within two weeks, I think. We always, it was true, you know, that the way that you love getting free clothes, once you got some kind of attention, you know, Joe blogs and JD sports and people lining up to be free clothes. Yeah. This is a really important thing, wasn't it? Oh, toy, still is right there. I still like to get free, you know, you know what I mean? I mean, like, you got your marks and Spencer's blogging earlier. I did buy it. I did buy it, but I'm opening the CD. The best thing I've ever seen. Freebies over. The feeling, good value of these great quality and you know, not expensive. Very good. Just dipping around. I was fascinated by it. You wrote about you signed with mute. Yeah. And you got a kind of decent advance. And from which most of the members of the band invested in property. And I think you say you bought some sunglasses. When I was saying about the invested in property, the all the bought the first hours is that?

27:04Yeah. Well, I mean, Simon, so we went from living with our mums and dads to being able to afford to buy houses of our own. And quite modest houses as well. But yeah, I was already living with my girlfriends house at the time. And so I didn't really, I wasn't even rushed to buy anything. So I just bought these stupid eight-hungic dollar glasses in L.A. or something. And I still got them as all the beautiful glasses. Oh, at least you've still got them. So when you look back, it's a long career, you know, and is there anything you regret that you did or you get? No, I do say, I mean, I took a lot of photographs. I've got some amazing photographs of me journey. I just wish I'd taken even more photographry. That's the only thing I would probably change. But everything else, even that, you know, we went through a split up in spring of 1995. And we were in a great position at the time. You're no manager, no record deal. Our money was running out. You know, we all had mortgages and four of us had children. And it was hard. It was an

28:08hard time. But I won't even change that person. I definitely got through that again because it gave me, when I came out of the other end of that, I feel like I was a better, you know, a better person, a better artist, a stronger person and a more understanding person. You know, kind of, it's very moving bit of the book because I'm going to you're on top of the pops and the next bit you're getting, you know, 90 pound a week income support or whatever. And free change, you know, I was getting milk tokens of us. I could get free milk because I had two kids under the age of three or whatever. And, you know, the social security at the time, whatever it was, you could get free milk if you had babies and you were unemployed. So I went from that, you know, I went from summer of 1994 doing glassdenberry and doing top of the pops with marquee, Smith out of the fall. That was in roughly the middle of 1994 and a year later I'm signing on and I've been to go to the job center and, you know, pretend to be looking for work. Is it embarrassing in any way or it was a time.

29:11And it wasn't a time. I'm not really taught about it more over the years, but I just think I recognize you. Oh yeah, that was embarrassing because I'd be in the local supermarket like, you know, getting the groceries and I'd be hiding the milk tokens in the palm of my hand. It was like a little paper, like a little raffle ticket saying free milk, two points of free milk. Yeah. And I'd be hiding it because I knew that minibus was shopping in the same place. And if they see me and in milk tokens over, it's going to be a bit of a weird looking at it because everybody in our community in, in March of Milner or Rochelle, they knew what I did and they knew that I'd been on top of the pops and they all thought I was loaded and I wasn't, you see, that's the perennial problem, isn't it? People assume that everybody is as rich as Elton John. Yeah, it's the liberty with earnings, don't they? Yeah, absolutely. And you know what? I was probably guilty of that before I entered that world as well, but why did I put it in the book because I just feel like it's one of the most,

30:12it was one of the darkest periods I've been through really. I mean, I wasn't, you know, I didn't have a terminal illness or anything, but career wise, it was made on the absolute ass, you know, I don't mind talking about it because I got through it and it's sort of, I think it's a great lesson in seeing a bloke who's down and been kicked a few times and you know what, I'm going to get out of it and I've got to work my way out of it. It's very, it's very moving actually, but you would, you mentioned 24 hour party people earlier on and that interest me because what's it like to to see a section of your life, mythologise like that on screen? Did it feel even remotely? Actually, you've got to come here rolling, yeah, I'm new. Yeah, I play a, I play a train conductor. That's right. I opposite Steve Kugan because Steve's playing Anthony Wilson. So it's just a brief part of that, but even, you know, even being as objective as a can about it, I think it's an amazing piece of art that movie because factually it is way off the mark here and there, you know, you know, that book, but it's a way of

31:13to capture the, the spirit of the chaos and the cooler and the madness and the insane, it was just a bad period and that film totally captures that madness, I think, you know, even I've said factually it's not, not very accurate, but it shows what a crazy film. Yeah, great film, I think Steve Kugan's brilliant. Yeah. You met so many interesting characters. You talk about a whole period when there's a type of mancunion who's called a Baldric and Baldric after Black Hatter, isn't it? And that refers to, I think, a bass, isn't it? It's, yeah, I don't know. Okay, what was that phrase? It wasn't made by, I remember it being a thing, where there's a few people on the mantis music scene that had unusual ear cuts and some of the ball, leds like mine was a ball, but there was one guy called Paul and he had just the most beautiful, long, blonde, curly ear. You know, Steve was part of this scene as well and there were DJs, some of it somewhere in bands, some were just, you know, a claw shot, in fact Paul sold out, that's that

32:18but then somebody came up with this turn, Baldric, I don't even know where it came from, but we got a call from ID magazine saying we're going to do a feature about the Baldric's and the sent a photographer up and a journalist to chat to some of us. I don't think I'm in the photo shoots that are in the magazine. It's kind of, it's a crescent from the Stan Rose. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. A guy called, a guy called, a little bit of a bass tree kid about it. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, and we did the photo shoot outside the boardwalk. We did part of the photo shoot and a chat with the journalist outside the boardwalk and it was, I remember it being, it was a nice day and just another bad moment, you know, why these people from London come into Tartels just because I would, I would have her styles. Yeah. So you're saying really significant people. I mean, Tony Wilson, Marquis Smith, you know, Noel Leeham and said, were there any particular characters you met who just made a really

33:20lasting impression? If you get, I mean, it's difficult to, I'm popping down to one. Every, every one of the ones you just mentioned, really, you know, definitely Mark Smith was outstanding, just probably probably the most memorable artists I've ever had the privilege of knowing, you know, I just, he was, he was a one off one, he was nothing like it. Tony was amazing, and you know, there's a catalyst for making amazing things happen around Manchester within the music community, and you know, the city in general, he was phenomenal, you know, what an amazing individual. Sean, I'm going to make Sean the first, you know, first meeting Sean with his own friends now, all these years later, me and Beza Closs, me and Manu were very close. Just all, all huge characters here, aren't they? Maybe that's, maybe that's a big part of what you need to be if you're going to be in the Manchester band and make those great records that we did. You know what I mean, it's like, yeah, there's no shrinking violets, oh, they're really,

34:22that's the one I can make of. Yeah, I think I think Tim Gourge is, you know, he's not as full on as some of the other characters, you know, he has that reluctance to see about him, sometimes I think, is, you know, he's beautiful man, and he's one of the most loved people in my, so in this story, I think. Well, is the only person we've ever interviewed on this podcast, in the thousands we've done, who was lying down, wasn't he? He was. That's right. I'm not a doctor, literally, that indicates the certain amount of. Could you see him lay down? Was it just audio? No, you can see him. I really am. A video. Yes. Just a little bit. I couldn't have done that. Yeah, you could have done that. We wouldn't have seen you shirt that. So, so what, give us an idea of what you do now. I mean, spiral cup, it's still going, and then you're DJing as well. Is that live? Is that radio? Is that what? I retired from radio nearly three years ago. I was on radio full-time,

35:22I'll be here for 20 or 20 years, on various brands, like Mac, FM, and Radio X, and the BBC Manchester. So I did that for over 20 years, but it got to the point where I was really aware that it was stopping me being creative, you know, stopping me making my own records. It was stopping me from writing a book, and I've got all the, I've always worked on other projects as well. So the reason I left radio was to concentrate on being, you know, an artist, a creative person. Yeah, the spirals are very busy, we're out there doing gigs, you know, constantly, got a new album ready to come out in January. And then beyond that, I'm a family man, you know, I've got a living stock port with me, my wife and three of our boys. So yeah, I'm a busy, I'm a busy fella, you know, I'm always busy. I know that I sort of like it like that as well. I think even if I get a day off and there's nothing to do, I get busy doing DIY or something, you know, I mean, you're on the kind of book tour now, you know, the stuff. Yeah, I'm doing a lot of book launch events and Q&A sessions and signing sessions of that.

36:26But I'm enjoying it. It's just the early days. The book's all been out less than a week, but the initial feedback I'm getting is really, really nice. And I don't know if the word, is it me? It's rewarding. I'm loving it. I'm loving it. You know, I feel like, because for years and years, it's a law and a process writing a book. You know, I'm sure you're working on it. It's like it's just you and you, you, you, you might book in my case. And I'm a one finger type. Oh, well, but also you can't cut corners. You can't, there's no way you could just sit there idling and looking out the window, thinking yourself has to achieve a certain amount of work. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a law and a process in it. And I think a lot of time, I'm starting to thinking, is anybody else going to find this as as funny as I am or as exciting as I am? Are they going to get goose bumps? Like I've got now when I'm typing the stories, but yes, so far, people are getting it. And it's, yeah, it's nearly, nearly nice to get that feedback that I'm getting so far. I'm sure if somebody's going to stick the boot in at some point, but don't worry about it. Yeah. It's a lovely, it's a lovely feeling to look back at the past and

37:29make sense of it and realize the process of writing it, but you realise all the best things about it. Some of the work I think I think the best, you know, it's, you know, I think one of the things I wanted it to be, I wanted it to be an inspiring book, an inspiring story because it's the ups and downs and it's the, you know, it's the exciting bits and the ship bits, but I wanted it to be funny as well and educational because it does tell, you know, even if you take the inspiring part out of the story, it tells the story of a city that's going through a massive renaissance, you know, not just architectural, but culturally as well. And I think that's, it's the story of that city changing and my part within that, you know, in my band and my contemporaries and what we, what we brought to the party, you know, and I think it's, you know, I'm proud of it. I'm up through the way to, no, you know, well, there it is, the Manchester Chronicles, True Tales of Music, Madness and Mayhem, 1976 to 2006, it's all over by Clint Boone. Clint,

38:32been lovely to talk to you. Very nice to talk to you. It's been great to see you to us all, I can't believe we've never actually, I don't know if it's been, we're both going to get down to Markson Spencer tomorrow and see if they've got any of those shoes left. This podcast was brought to you by the word.