An Interview with Joesolo (2/4) by Nick Quantrill

(1/4), (2/4), (3/4), (4/4).

The reason so much material came so quickly was that I opened the floodgates at the same time I quit drinking. You don't realise what a fog alcohol creates around your brain until it lifts. I wrote so many songs so quickly and had so much clarity and sense of purpose again. It was unbelievable. I was a habitual drinker. Not an alcoholic exactly, but someone for whom alcohol was as much a part of the evening's routine as bed. I quit in the February of 2003 and I've never looked back. The problem was I had too many songs for one album. So I made two. There's another on the way.

Which artists and records have influenced the Joesolo releases, 'An Exile in Suburbia' and 'The Man Who Dreamed Of Fairyland'? Are these different to what inspired you within a band context?

Well I wanted to throw the rule book out of the window as to what you could and couldn't do with a solo record. The stereotypical singer-songwriter has either surrounded themselves with session musicians and made a band record, or is quietly noodling away on an acoustic guitar moaning about some dark inner pain or something. I decided to carry on as if there was a band behind me.

I think it's quite unique in that the drums and bass are clearly missing but I've tried to do enough with the guitars and backing vocals to suggest their presence anyway. In that sense the people who have influenced me over the years are no different. My tastes are a lot more varied now and that is probably reflected in the kind of songs I write, but overall I'm not comfortable with the idea of being 'influenced'. I don't want to sound like anyone. I'm not interested in being the new this or that. I want to be the first Joe Solo.

Sending out the Joesolo CDs to people in exchange for a donation to one of the charities listed on your website is a fairly different approach, maybe even unique. What's the thinking behind this?

I want everything about Joe Solo to mean something. Every last little detail. I write a lot of songs about honesty and compassion for people around you, the idea of putting the whole before the self. You see I grew up with Thatcherism, and one by one I watched my schoolfriends become self-obsessed money-grabbing wankers, and I hated it. I absolutely loathed the whole concept that you had more value as a person if you had money. I decided that the only thing you could do was live out your political principles, become a little socialist state all of your own.

There's a writer called Zygmund Bauman who puts all this better. He believes the only way for the world to survive is for a system of Moral Socialism to rise out of the ruins of Western Society. My song A Silent Revolution tries to put these ideas across. I have very few overheads these days, and because I record at home in my shed the cost price of a Joe Solo CD is round about £1. I sell them at gigs for £2 so that I can afford to give them away over the internet.

Continued ...Next Page

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