In Glasgow, when stories get tense and two people look at each other askance, there's always one who says: like ahead. It's a bit like ours: come on, try it. Bobby Gillespie decided to name it himself Like Ahead Primal Scream's new album, out Friday 8 November. The twelfth in the studio of a now forty-year history, the first since time immemorial recorded without the contribution of keyboardist Martin Duffy, who passed away at the end of 2022. A very political album in the lyrics and very funk in the sounds, very different from the previous one Chaosmosis (2016), marking a discontinuity between one chapter and another that has always characterized the Primal Scream story. At the controls, the return of David Holmes, already working on More Light (2013), strongly supported as producer by Gillespie himself, who, via connection from London, told us about the path that led to the release of the album.
Like Ahead arrives eight years later Chaosmosis. In the history of the band there had never been such a long recording silence.
After the release of Chaosmosis and the related tour, I worked until the end of 2018 writing, recording and mixing Utopian Ashesthe album with Jenny Beth that came out two years later than expected. Meanwhile in 2020 I started writing Tenement Kidmy autobiography. I was on it all year and part of the next year. Last year I also did the soundtrack for 5 Hectersa French film by director Emilie Deleuze. In short, I've done a lot of things: it's been so long since the last album also for practical reasons.
In the press material relating to the new album, we read that you told David Holmes that you weren't sure Primal Scream would ever make a new album. What changed your mind?
True, I wasn't sure we would. At the beginning of 2020, right before Covid, I felt it was time to rethink the reasons for still keeping a band together and ask ourselves if we were going to move forward, and how. We were stuck in the endless cycle where an album is followed by a tour, followed by another album and another tour, and so on. We needed to take some time off and rethink how we should make music in the following years. I knew there had to be some changes. I think it's important to think about what you're doing, why you're doing it and what, if any, you want to create in the future. You can't always work the same way, every three years it's better to change things and rethink them, otherwise you risk repeating yourself endlessly.
This need for change seems to be a constant in the band's history.
We always wanted to experiment and make things interesting, not only for us but also for those who listen to us. Sure, it's so exhausting being a Primal Scream fan. But I don't like bands that are slaves to themselves, and whose fans always know what's coming. It wouldn't be correct to name names, but I think I've gotten the idea.
Photo: Adam Peter Johnson
On the cover of the new album there is a very cool photo of your father. You've said that he was a socialist who fought for social justice his whole life, and that some of the album's themes reflect what you believe in and how you were raised. Maybe the young Primal Scream wouldn't have chosen the same photo, because rock'n'roll is also about going against your parents. However, when you are no longer so young, things change. When did you start to see your father as a part of who you are now?
I think it happened when I had kids myself. Until that moment you don't understand what being parents meant to your mother and father. You have no idea the sacrifices they had to go through. I am referring in particular to the loss of freedom. When I was born, my father was 21 and my mother 19: they were very young, practically teenagers. They gave their whole lives to me and my brother, and I never thought about this until I had children myself. When the first one was born I was already 41 years old, 20 years older than my parents when I was born. I had 20 years of freedom that they didn't have.
Since joining the band, this is the first Primal Scream album without Martin Duffy, who passed away at the end of 2022. His son said that you were not fair to him, even from a financial point of view. Is there anything you want to say about it?
There have been a lot of untrue things said about it. Martin was an alcoholic and this had a very negative impact on his being a musician. We had decided to do something to try to help him, we offered to pay for his rehabilitation treatment, but he vehemently refused. We paid someone to help him, but after a few weeks he stopped seeing her. He didn't want to admit he had a drinking problem. At the time, for various reasons, we decided not to respond to the accusations made against us, but I can assure you that we took care of him, and we really did our best to help him with his addiction, as well as paying him up until after his death.
As for Primal Scream today, in the press material it says that to record the new album you went to David Holmes' house in Belfast to sing over his rhythm tracks. Then bass, drums and percussion were recorded in Los Angeles and finally Andy Innes added his guitar and keyboards separately. Why did you work in this way and not all together in a more traditional way?
The reason is that for this record I wanted there to be a producer, whereas usually Andy and I are co-producers on Primal Scream albums. This time I wanted to be just the singer and songwriter, but not the producer, a role I wanted David to fill. The process to get to the finished album was more or less this. David would send me some breakbeats and I would see if there were any songs I had already written that would work with his basic ideas. Then he would send demos to his rhythm section in Los Angeles, with his breakbeats in them and me singing on them and playing guitar. Davey Chadwitten (percussion), Jason Falkner (bass) and Jay Bellerose (drums) added the rhythm part and what came out was an incredible version of the song, on which I sang again. Eventually Andy would bring in his guitar and keyboards. All the keyboards on the new album are his. If you hear electronics, a synthesizer or a psychedelic sound made with a sequencer, it's his stuff.
Do you generally prefer this way of working?
We've been working like this for years, it's not like we lock ourselves in the studio. Sometimes it happened, but most of the time it didn't. Let's say our way of working is more like hip hop, so the way we worked with David wasn't unusual for us. Of course, if you see a photo of Primal Scream you're led to think that they're guys who are part of a band, with one guy writing a song that they're all in the studio recording. But it rarely happened to us.
You mentioned earlier Tenement Kidyour autobiography. Many pages of the book are dedicated to the years when being a musician was just a rock'n'roll dream. Now that you've realized it and that you're 63 years old, how do you experience being in a band?
My rock'n'roll dream was to live the life of an artist and not have to work in a factory with a boss who tells you what to do. Not having to live watching the clock like employed people do. The dream was to be a creative person and make a living, to be free from salary, age and the slavery of work. It's something that comes from being born in Scotland, a working class region that had prepared that destiny for me. This is why I'm an artist, and I've made my rock'n'roll dream come true. Today I am 63 years old but for me what matters is still what I do: doing it well and trying to find my voice as an artist.
When you were young, wasn't rock'n'roll also a lifestyle for you?
The most important thing for me was to be an artist. Obviously in the 90s there were parties, girls, a bit of drugs and those things. But it's what any young person would do, or at least try: whether you're in a band or have a normal job, you want to go out and have fun.
Returning to the new album, in the single Love Insurrection there is a female voice reciting words in Italian. Why this choice?
There was this Italian musician, Anna Caragnano, who was working with David in Belfast on the soundtrack for the series The Woman in the Wall. While there, it was David himself who suggested that he put his voice up Love Insurrection. I have no idea why he suggested it, but I said it was fine with me, as long as I wrote the words. So I wrote them and she translated them and then acted them, but we never met.
In Innocent Money you sing that Marx's dream of a classless society is further away than the mountains of Mars. The protagonist of the song is a homeless man. Do you think the current Labor-led British government is doing enough for the most disadvantaged classes of the population?
It's too early to tell. The government only took office in early July. They have just presented the economic package and I hope that in the end the rich will have to pay more taxes to help improve the conditions of the poorest. Governments are not actually sovereign, they must align themselves with international markets, with global capitalism, with certain laws of the world.
In Like Ahead there are several pieces that deal with political themes. What exactly is he talking about Deep Dark Waters?
It's a warning. After the concentration camps and the horrors of Nazi-fascism we said never again, but at that moment, after the Second World War, there was a commonality of purpose that we will no longer have. Today we are witnessing the rise of fascist parties around the world, along with the return of religion and nationalism used as flags. When I say I feel we are sinking into deep, dark waters I mean we are headed for disaster.
How did this happen, in your opinion?
The parties ranging from the center to the left have forgotten the working class and have laid the foundations for the rise of the right: you have Meloni, we have Farage here, Trump in America and so on. I think the trust people have in politics has been eroded. Once upon a time, most people had jobs that lasted forever and good standards of living. Now these standards have plummeted, there is no longer a safety net. People vote for the right because the right has produced charismatic individuals with simple solutions to complex problems. Those who voted for Labor in Great Britain, for the Social Democrats in Germany or for the Communists in Italy saw things getting worse and turned to the right because they felt humiliated. Humiliation leads to people's anger, the same one that allowed the rise of Nazism in Germany and fascism in Italy. Deep Dark Waters talks about this, and is very influenced by the theories of Franco Bifo Berardi, who is my friend.
In Settler's Blues chants: “They burned our homes, bombed our cities. Poisoned our wells, cut down the olive trees. They exiled us to our own land. Thrown like lepers into the desert sands.” You have often sided with the Palestinian people. What do you think of Israel's right to exist without being attacked as happened on October 7 last year?
The only thing I stand for is the Palestinian people's right to self-determination and resistance against the occupation. There's nothing else to say.
