Here’s to the solo performers…
Paul Napier (pronounced “Nap-ee-ay, it’s French, I think”) has been causing something of a stir in Glasgow’s music community. Shot through with religious references and more than a few drinking stories, his songs are by turns maudlin and curiously uplifting. Sounding like a less whiny Bob Dylan rather than yet another Paolo Nutini-wannabe, and without a Fife Fence to be seen, he’s far more sophisticated than someone so young deserves to be. We caught up with him in Glasgow as he polished off a bottle of wine.
Is This Music?: Hi Paul. To get the ball rolling, why don`t you tell me how your love affair with music started?
Paul Napier: Well, ever since I was coerced into taking violin lessons in my earliest youth (whilst I was living in Saudi Arabia) there have been musical influences all around me, even when I was unwilling to acknowledge them. But I really took an active interest in music when I started to get hormonal imbalances, and to use swearwords and get indefinable urges to rebel against an immaterial mass that didn’t necessarily have to exist, except in my surging, fervid resentment against all influencing forces. Namely, when I became a teenager and got into punk music, a couple of decades after it died a stinky death. However, it was a good outlet for me, and it led me on to other things.
ITM?: So what are the pros and cons of being a solo artist? It must be a bit more nerve-wracking having to go on stage alone.
PN: Rather, but then you`re stripped of the comforting blanket of white noise feedback that accompanies all good punk bands. On the plus side you don’t have to try to push intractable individuals in directions they have no intention of directing themselves in. Speaking as a social degenerate with no generally recognizable social skills, one benefit of soloism (that may be a neologism) is that interpersonal relationships concerning music are kept to a minimum, my track record having shown the undesirable ramifications they usually entail. That being said, a good working relationship may exist as some sort of unrealized Platonic ideal on a parallel plane.
ITM?: I’ve just got Old Mercado on the stereo in the background – what’s that song about? I’ve been trying to unravel it and failing.
PN: Well, Mercado can be the name of anything you desire, it’s a multi-purpose epithet, and can be applied to any number of things: a bottle of wine, or an earthquake, or a lover for instance. The references to religious figures are not entirely spurious and are probably (though I have no way of verifying this fact, ignorant as I am of the ways and processes of much of the creation process) indicative of some deeply held spiritual longing for a tangible alternative. It’s transient and effluent, as someone once said (probably me), and if the interpretations add up to more than the concept interpreted I would be without complaint.
ITM?: Tell me about your recent In The City gig in Manchester – that seems to have been a big event for a lot of up-and-coming Scottish musicians.
PN: Well, it’s something of a musical whorehouse, that place, and though I did line up willingly with the selection of other catamites it was through compunction, and it probably did me a lot of good. In fact it was an eye-widening experience and a real people-hole (peephole) into the sordid internal workings of that vast monolith of vice and iniquity, the music industry. Of course, I don’t deny that various ‘good bacteria’ probably operate in such a gigantuously huge structure, but the object as a whole is objectionable to say the least. The son of a socialist ranting against sons of socialists is what it amounts to, and as we all know, two negatives usually make a positive, and vice versa or verse vica. Anyway, went to a wonderful Chinese karaoke bar after my gig and sang ‘Wuthering Heights’ to a lot of markedly less receptive people than were at my own gig. I don’t know if this is worse for Kate Bush or me. Probably me.
ITM?: Maybe that karaoke version of -Wuthering Heights- could make it onto a b-side sometime – it could join my collection of surreal covers!
PN: The bald fellow in front wasn’t of that opinion. He told me to, and I quote, “get a haircut”.
ITM?: As I recall, Kate Bush had quite long hair when she did that song… you should have pointed out your dedication to authenticity.
PN: I did. And then he pointed out my conspicuous lack of physical prowess.
ITM?: So what does the future hold for you? Any big plans on the horizon? I can’t help feeling that Edinburgh has been missing out!
PN: Of course it has, it was constructed purely to receive the rancid effluvia of Glasgow’s under classes, you know which way the wind blows. Anyway it’s very kind of you to say such complementary things, though it is doubtful whether they are true. The key to the secret to the lack of my success is that I never predict anything, ever. I hope for something big in the future, though I do not plan. Rather a dilettantish attitude, I think you`ll agree
ITM?: One last question, then I’ll let you get on with your evening. In the words of your own song, “drinking to remember, or drinking to forget?”
PN: Well, I’ve already worked my way through a bottle of Paul Masson rosé whilst chitty-chatting to your good self, and I cant remember what your last question was so if that doesn’t answer your question I don’t know what will or what won’t, in fact I don’t know anything. Who the fuck are you? Where am I? I’ve forgotten”
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