My Music: Bernard Sumner, NME, 2009
[This was the first time I’d interviewed Bernard. It was face-to-face at a hotel in Cheshire. I was so excited that I didn’t sleep a wink the night before and had to drink a few coffees on the drive before meeting him. Bernard had done his homework to choose these tracks and when I got back to London, I downloaded or bought all his choices that I didn’t already own, including ‘She Taught Me How To Yodel’. It’s crazy that despite working at NME on and off from 2004-16, this is the only thing I ever did for them (apart from hundreds of very good headers and standfirsts as per my sub-editing work!) and I didn’t even get a credit on the page. What’s more, they didn’t really want to run it – they thought Bernard was old news. I didn’t fit in at NME, which I’m very proud of today.]
BERNARD SUMNER
Bad Lieutenant
NME, 2009
Words: Lee Gale
Guaranteed to make me dance…
‘Paris Is Burning’ – Ladyhawke
“I heard it on the radio when I was driving into Manchester and thought, ‘Top chorus, this.’ I bought it and loved it. It’s cool disco – it sounds a bit New York Eighties on the verses. Don’t ever play it cos I just can’t stop dancing. Sometimes I hear it on the radio when I’m in the park, or in a shop, and I just stop and dance, wherever I am, even in a restaurant, and it really embarrasses the people around me.”
First record I bought…
‘Ride A White Swan’ – T-Rex
“On my 16th birthday, my mum bought me a record player. I’d heard this on the radio and liked the guitar lick. So I bought it and played it on my record player. Three minutes 50. It finished. I got up again and played it. And then it finished. And I thought, ‘All this getting up and down is a bit annoying.’ It’s a great track, but it’s always puzzled me what the lyrics are about – ‘Ride a white swan like the people of the Beltane.’ If any of your readers could interpret the lyrics that would be great cos I’ve been scratching my head since I bought it.”
If I was doing karaoke I’d sing…
‘She Taught Me How To Yodel’ – Frank Ifield
“We were once in a karaoke bar in Japan and I sang ‘Krafty’. It wasn’t in Japanese, but I did record a version of ‘Krafty’ in Japanese. I had a couple of interpreters in the studio when I was doing it. So I sang it and Phil [Cunningham] was there, the guitarist, and we listened to it, and we thought, ‘Fucking hell, it’s better than our version!’ But I’ve chosen ‘She Taught Me How To Yodel’. It’s about a guy who goes on holiday to Switzerland and meets this bird and she teaches him how to yodel. When he comes back home he remembers his love by yodelling. It’s a very bizarre record. I’ve never tried to sing it, but I’d like to. I go skiing with my 16-year-old son and to embarrass him I ski behind him yodelling.”
Right now I’m loving…
‘Mathematics’ – Cherry Ghost
“It’s not cos I like mathematics – I don’t like mathematics, I hate mathematics. It’s quite a Sixties-sounding track. I think they’re from Manchester. There’s a lot of strings in it, so it’s quite Scott Walker-y. A track like this would have come out years ago, got radio play and been a massive hit. It’s not so easy now. These days you’ve got to have a public profile and it’s getting harder for bands to get on the ladder. It’s a shame because this is a beautiful song.”
A guilty pleasure of mine is…
‘Long Way 2 Go’ – Cassie
“Cassie’s an R&B artist. It’s a really cool track and I like the synthesizers in it. A lot of R&B I don’t like. People might say, ‘Ooh, I don’t like reggae,’ or, ‘I don’t like R&B,’ – I say that – or, ‘I don’t like heavy rock,’ but I think you can always find an example within any genre where someone excels, that appeals to you and crosses your own prejudice. This crossed my own prejudice. It’s really clever the way it’s been put together. It’s put together with not very much, but it’s still very effective. It’s quite a simple track and not with shitloads of overdubs. I’m jealous of stuff like that.”
A record I wish I’d made is…
‘Pig’ – Garlic
“Garlic are another case of an overlooked band. Maybe they didn’t look right at the time, or they had a crap name – Garlic’s not brilliant, I must say – or they didn’t have friends in high places or they didn’t drink in the right pub in Camden. They’re really talented songwriters and everyone should hear The Murky World Of Seats. They sound a bit Neil Young and a bit Lou Reed but I’ve got to say, they do it well. ‘Pig’ is about unbridled greed. We’re in a consumer-obsessed society, where everyone is driving about trying to find stores which sell settees. Certain individuals are extremely greedy and ‘Pig’ sums it up. There are few words – again it’s this thing I’ve got about doing a lot with a little.”
The record that made the biggest impression on me is…
‘Voodoo Chile’ – The Jimi Hendrix Experience/‘Trans-Europe Express’ – Kraftwerk
“I was in my T-Rex time and I was sat next to my mate at school and said, ‘Have you heard that Hendrix has died?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Have you heard ‘Voodoo Chile’?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘It’s just a load of fucking noise.’ He said, ‘I like it.’ It intrigued me so much that I thought, ‘I’ve got to find out why he likes it, cos to me it’s a washing machine being kicked down the stairs.’ So I bought it, played it four times and it suddenly clicked. It wasn’t about catchy tunes, it was about what you could do sonically with a guitar. That put me on a voyage of discovery. With ‘Trans-Europe Express’, Ian Curtis sometimes used to play it before we went onstage. I instantly liked it. It was the same sonic shenanigans but with synthesizers. These tracks opened my ears and mind.”
All bands first starting out should listen to…
‘Rock The Casbah’ – The Clash
“After Ian died, when we first started going to America, we’d hear this in clubs in New York. Over here, clubs were awful. They were like rotten disco and cheesy funk. In New York, they used to mix rock and dance records. I thought ‘Rock The Casbah’ was a great amalgamation of rock with a fusion of dance elements within the song. I found that very attractive. I thought it was very brave of them to do that and not just carry on making punk records. I think new bands should be brave.”