I’ve been looking forward to sharing this interview since the day it was recorded. As it happens, my original plan for this was for it to be episode number two, but once I sat down to edit it I realised that of my side of the interview was garbled – it’d somehow been completely corrupt during the recording process. Now, normally I record my end twice so that I’ve got a backup in case something like this happens, and the one time I didn’t do it also happened to be the one time a backup would’ve been really useful, so when I found out it was corrupt I thought it was game over.
A good friend of mine (the superb Lewis Glass) suggested that I should re-record my side because Andy’s side was fine. A great idea, I’m sure you’ll agree, but a lengthy solution to a problem brought on my own stupidity.
What followed was literally two months of procrastination. I knew recording would be a big job and I honestly couldn’t face it. However I also knew that I would need to do it at some point, so that’s what I did and here it is: the final complete interview with Andrew Falkous from Future of the Left.
I first became aware of Falco’s work about a decade ago, when the bass player of my old band used to spend at least half of our band practices talking about how good mclusky* were. For reasons that completely escape me, I didn’t look into his recommendation at the time, so they sorta just passed me by.
Later, when I was editor at Daily Dischord, a copy of Future of the Left’s second album ‘Travels With Myself and Another’ found its way through my letterbox. Intrigued by the press release’s reference to mclusky* I popped the disk in my CD player and needless to say, after two listens I was hooked.
Falco has always had a reputation for being somewhat opinionated, which is one of the reasons why I felt like I had to interview him. From his wonderful, often antagonistic lyrics to the way he takes pop music and fuses it with off-kilter alt-rock, he’s always struck me as truly punk rock – fearless, witty, intelligent, and incisive.
You get a great sense of that in this interview, and in my opinion it’s one of the best interviews I’ve ever conducted.
What follows is a funny and insightful chat, as Andy waxes lyrical on his creative process, how to be in a band, what it’s like transitioning between music and writing fiction, how he composes lyrics, the rich creative talents that he has, his productivity and oh so much more.
This one’s a keeper. Enjoy it.