Music > Interviews

Inspiral Carpets

25/11/15

The Inspiral Carpets need no introduction. You already know all their organ led anthems..Saturn 5, I Want You, Dragging Me Down, Indian Rope..the list goes on and on. I had a super chat with legendary dude and keyboard player Clint Boon, also known for being a DJ on Radio X, about where the Inspirals’ cow design came from, how John Peel helped the band and why he always shaves before his radio show. This is how it feels to be in a perennially successful and well loved band for nearly 30 years. Newbies, take note.

How did you come to learn keyboards?

It was a proper accident really. As a kid I wanted to be in a band and be a popstar, but I never studied instruments at school, I just wanted to be a rock ‘n’ roll singer. I was born in 1959 so I grew up through the 60’s and 70’s and as a teenager 1950’s rock n roll music was my first love, people like Elvis were a real inspiration. When the punk rock thing happened in 1967 I was 16 or 17 and that was the moment I realised I could actually do this. A lot of the punk rockers I was watching like The Buzzcocks and The Fall and The Clash weren’t amazing musicians, they were working class people like me so I realised that I might have a chance at doing it too. Seeing The Sex Pistols in December 1967 made me get off my arse and start doing it. I tried a few instruments and I just built my own set of really lo fi recording equipment at home through the 80’s, collecting microphones and tape recorders, guitars, and then I stumbled across the Farfisa Compact Duo keyboard which is what I still use now. That sound is now what I’m known for, and what people associate with the Inspirals.

Who has inspired you as a keyboard player?

The obvious ones are people like Ray Manzarek from The Doors, Dave Greenfield from The Stranglers and Phillip Glass. I couldn’t play alongside any of them! They’re the best in the world and I’m still a punk rocker, I’m not a great keyboard player, I’m a well known keyboard player.

When the Inspiral Carpets started out, what was the aim, and who were your initial inspirations?

When anyone starts a band, you don’t assume you’re going to make any money, you just want to make a record, and that’s usually just a single. Back in the day when the format was vinyl that was a real achievement. You’d find the money to record, if you couldn’t find a label to release it you’d do the pressing yourself, so by the time you got your vinyl in your hand that was a massive achievement. So our aim was just to make a record and to make music that sounded like our heroes; we were emulating the Velvet Underground, Jefferson Airplane, the Seeds. Because of John Peel, it happened really quickly for us. He got on board really early and gave us a momentum that propelled us through the next 10 years of our career. We didn’t have much time to sit around after that.

How did you become a Radio DJ?

We did the Inspirals full time for 10 years from 85 to 95 and because we worked at such a high level internationally we were always in front of a microphone being interviewed or performing. The first person to ask me to do some radio was Janice Long. She was setting up a little station in Liverpool, and shr asked me to get involved. Because I wasn’t nervous being in front of a microphone I said I’d do it. It started from there, doing loads of stand-in jobs for people. In 2003 when the Inspirals got back together I did an interview with Tom Robinson at 6Music and at the end he said you sound really good on the radio, I’m going away in August, do you want to do my show for two weeks? So that was my first serious radio job. Because of that, people in the North started offering me jobs so I was suddenly in demand as a stand in DJ. XFM wanted to start a Manchester station so they came to me and asked me to help build it and present a show. I never set out to be a radio presenter as I didn’t think my voice would work on radio.

What gives you more pleasure, performing with the Inspirals or being a DJ?

There’s nothing like being onstage and performing songs that you’ve written to thousands of people you’ve never met and getting their reaction. That’s quite a unique thing. But you spend weeks and weeks writing the songs, weeks and weeks rehearsing, weeks and weeks recording it and marketing it, and then you eventually get to do the gig a year after you’ve written the song. That‘s when you get the excitement of looking into people’s eyes and seeing them reacting. So it’s a long process before you get the final kick, whereas with radio or club DJing you put the tune on and you see the reaction immediately. I couldn’t say which is most exciting out of being a radio DJ, a club DJ or being in the band to be honest with you. I suppose being on the radio you don’t have to worry about what you’re going to wear, although I religiously have a shave and wear smart clothes when I turn up for the radio which is weird isn’t it? You just never know who you’re going to bump into on the way in, you know! I always get smartened up. I’m still a bit of Mod I suppose!

My favourite Inspirals tracks is I Want You feat Mark E Smith which I own on 7”, one of my most treasured records. You also worked with John Cooper Clarke on Let You Down on the new album. They’re both very charismatic Manchester men. What influence has the city of Manchester had on your music over the years would you say?

Oh, massive. A massive influence, not just because that’s where we live and that’s what we’re stuck with, but some of the things we’ve written about over the years are very much Manchester pictures really. Wherever you live is going to influence your songwriting. Manchester is probably the most important music city in the world in my opinion for bands like Joy Division, Buzzcocks, the Stone Roses and more recent stuff have inspired us over the years. It’s been a massive bonus being born and operating in this city.

Which Manchester acts would you recommend we check out at present?

Blossoms are from Manchester, they’re doing really well and I think they’ll do well internationally. Catfish and the Bottlemen again are going to go far. There’s a band called Nude, they’re really unusual. I’m doing two weeks on BBC Introducing which is giving me a chance to hear some of the cutting edge stuff happening in Manchester at the moment. It seems to be as productive as it’s ever been which is nice. We might not be at the centre of the music industry at the moment but surely the spotlight will come back on us sooner or later. There’ll be another Madchester one day! It just spews out these incredible world class acts like Elbow, Oasis and Take That.

I wanted to just ask you about the cow motif that that followed you through the years…how did that originate?

It was purely because where I used to live there was a cow field at the bottom of the garden and I used to take a lot of photos of cows! I was an amateur photographer. I had a friend who got me knocked off film from the local colour lab so I wasn’t constrained by the expense of buying film at the time. So I had all these photos of cows, and when we started the band, because I had all these colour transparencies of cows looking at the camera, we started projecting them behind the band onstage. We needed a backdrop and so we used what we had. People started mooing at gigs and they still do. We did a gig in Somerset recently and there were 9,000 people mooing. I had to explain to some people that they’re not booing, they’re mooing!

How’s it been working with your original singer Stephen again on your most recent album?

It’s been brilliant, with respect to Tom who was our singer for 20 years, it’s nice to have Stephen back. It feels like we’re back to where we started and it’s just got something of the spirit of the old garage band, which is nice. I think when you get someone new in you start doing things a bit differently and we’re enjoying it. I still see Tom and we get on very well. Stephen’s doing a great job; for the last 20 years he’s been the manager of a drug dependency unit and has very much been in the real world and now he’s back in the fairy-tale land of travelling the world and playing gigs with us lot! He’s loving it.

You’re married with five children, and have a day job as a DJ. Are you looking forward to going out on tour for a rest?

Not really because these days most of us have kids so we come home when we can. On this tour we’re supporting Shed Seven so we’ll be offstage by nine o’clock so we’ll come home. None of us want to stay out for months on end and get wrecked like we would have done in the old days and I think everybody in the band thinks if they asked us to go on a six month tour of America without our wives and kids, we’d say no, sorry. The way the band now fits in perfectly with our lives; we’ve all got day jobs still.

How have you gone about working out your set for this tour with Shed Seven? You have so many songs you could choose from.

It’s going to be the big hits and a few off the new album. We’re picking songs that Shed Seven fans who may not know our stuff might like, a kind of good calling card. The Sheds are good mates of ours. Their first tour of the UK was actually supporting us back in the early 90’s and Rick Witter sang Chasing Rainbows at my wedding ceremony!

Inspiral Carpets play with Shed Seven at the LCR on 15th December. Tickets available from uea.ticketbookings.co.uk