Front page	From the Event Guide archive! This article refers to an event which took place on, or until, 25 March 2007 Music Interview – Mike Scott / The Waterboys That Was Then, This Is Now The Waterboys have returned to a CD player near you with a brilliant new album called ‘Book of Lightening’, the band’s first major-label release in many years. Kieran Owens spoke to head man Mike Scott about the past and the present. ‘Book of Lightening’ is a wonderful record, and will not disappoint your legions of fans. In particular, the track ‘She Tried To Hold Me’ is way up there with the your other Waterboys’ classics. Thank you. That track is my favourite. Tell me about the making of the record. Was it finished before or after you signed to Universal Records? We made it by funding it ourselves, and then, towards the end of the process, Universal and other record companies started talking to us. Universal were the ones that we wanted to sign with, and they basically got a finished album. How does it feel to be once again in the embrace of a corporate multi-national label? We were ready to release the record ourselves but I had a feeling that it was time to go back with a major label and, well, that’s what happened. Actually, we are with West 14, which is a small company within Universal. The guy who runs the label is called John Williams, and I knew him back in 1986 at Chrysalis Records, in the very early days of The Waterboys. He also produced a BBC Session for us, even before that. So I knew him as a record company man and as a producer. I always liked John, always felt right with him, and I respected his ears as well. So when he came in I was very keen to sign with him. To get the machinery of Universal into the bargain was great. As you were funding the record yourself, was it recorded over a long period or was it done in a very short burst of time? We recorded it very quickly. We did one track in June of last year and the bulk of the rest was recorded in September and October. We financed it from the proceeds of our summer festival schedule. I wanted to record it pretty much live in the studio, not for financial reasons, but I did some work last year, a re-issue of ‘Fisherman’s Blues’, which included a second CD of material that didn’t come out first time around. While I was working on that, I was very impressed by the fact that we had played everything live in the studio, which achieved a certain performance feel. I wanted to do that with this record, so we went to a studio that was sufficiently large enough to allow that to happen. It is called Sarm West in London. We played as a five-piece, with me singing live vocals and Steve (Wickham) with his fiddle. It was wonderful working like that again. Comparisons can be odious, but on ‘Book of Lightening’ you deliver a sound reminiscent of John Lennon and The Elephant Memory Band’s ‘Sometime In New York City’. Wow, that’s a compliment indeed. I’m not sure that it contains my favourite Lennon songs but it is wonderfully recorded. On your album, there are several ‘moods’ evident. Some of these are lighter Dr. Jekyll tracks, and some are darker ‘Mr. Hyde ones. For instance, on ‘Nobody’s Baby Anymore’, there is a snarly anger lurking about, not stemming from out-of -control ego but from a sense of acute self-possession. Were the songs written at different times, reflecting different states of mind? Oh yes. The writing was spread over twenty years. The last three songs on the record were all written at a series of rehearsal sessions at the Revenue Club in Dublin in 1986. Amazingly, I still have a dodgy old cassette of that rehearsal, with these prototype versions of those three songs. I could have done them for ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ but for various reasons, usually to do with lyrics, they weren’t ready. For instance, ‘Everybody Takes A Tumble’ is like a brother to the song ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ – the same rhythm, almost the same chords, the same kind of attitude. I’ve been sitting on that song for twenty years. It was always one of my favourites but no one else ever heard it. Only recently I finished the lyrics and this time last year I put it into the band’s live set and it sounded so great that I decided to record it. On the other hand, ‘Love Will Shoot You Down’ and ‘Crash of Angel Wings’ are brand new. And then ‘Strange Arrangement’, It’s Gonna Rain’ and ‘Sustain’ are all from the tern of the millennium. Finally, with ‘Nobody’s Baby Anymore’ and ‘She Tried To Hold Me’, I started writing them in 1986 and re-discovered them when I was working on the ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ re-mastered album. I had been listening to everything we had recorded for that album while I was working on the re-master. ‘No Body’s Baby’ was this little song fragment, with about four lines of lyrics. I felt that there must be a full song in there, so I sat down and finished it. It was the same with ‘She Tried To Hold Me’, of which all I had was the chorus, which I had originally sung only once in the studio in 1986. It had no verses until last year when I finished them. So the songwriting is from all different eras. When you listen to the final results, are you conscious of there being a Mike Scott of then and a Mike Scott of now? Yes I am. The three last songs are very much together at the end of the album because there have their own little ’86 revisited’ corner. For the official release of ‘Book of Lightening’ there is an additional DVD included, entitled ‘The Travels of The Waterboys’. What is featured on that? It is funny how we had never made a concert video before. But when Steve Wickham re-joined the band, in 2001, he brought his video camera and I though that that was cool, so I got one too. The two of us would be filming away like mad fools on tour, or giving people the camera to film us on stage. We built up quite a library of funny and cool footage that no one was getting to see. When Universal were preparing the record’s release they asked me if there was anything I had that would make it special for the fans. I thought that maybe we could use all those great clips. I edited it myself on my Mac. It was brilliant fun. It strikes me that the Mike Scott of today is a very much more confident and yet looser kind of a person than the Mike Scott of that earlier era. Maybe it’s because you don’t need to prove anything to anyone anymore. Back in 1986 I was very confident in some ways, having the edge and bravado of youth on my side. I’m 48 now, and I’m not really interested in those sorts of things. I am more grounded now, and I am a much better singer than I was then. I can really sing now. Do you enjoy now more than you enjoyed then? I do, yes. There were brilliant things about then but I think I am having a better time now. The Waterboys play the Point Theatre, on Dublin’s North Wall Quay, on Sunday 18th March. 7.30pm. €46, €44. They also play the INEC at the Gleneagle Hotel, in Killarney, on Saturday 17th; the Radisson Hotel, Galway, on Wednesday 21st; the Radisson Hotel, Sligo, on Friday 23rd; and the Waterfront Hall, Belfast, on Sunday 25th March. www.mikescottwaterboys.com / www.myspace.com/mikescottwaterboys / www.raglane.com / www.ticketmaster.ie