Much of the last month or so has been spent with Brett Anderson,
producing and co-writing his album. It’s been a real pleasure and quite
a departure for both of us, and I’m fairly reluctant to describe the
direction of it - partly because it will spoil the surprise, and partly
because part of the fun of the process is deviating from the ‘plan’.
But we have most of it written now I think, some of the songs being
conceived by Brett and then developed by me, and some starting with a
musical idea of mine which he then takes away and works on. It’s always
a thrill to hear that iconic voice coming through the speakers in my
studio, and we’re becoming regulars in the local cafes, although we’ve
become slightly wary of the one that sells giant, indigestible potatoes.

There have been a few film sessions too. I worked with a Jack C
Arnold, playing guitar on his beautiful score to a film called “The
Scouting Book For Boys” which promises to be an amazing film. A lot of
the music called for extremely quietly played acoustic guitar, which I
had to time by looking at a white bar moving across the movie. So it
was a case of looking from music to hand to screen whilst trying to
make as little extraneous noise as possible. In fact the hardest part
was stopping my stomach from making all the little noises that stomachs
make, that are undetectable until amplified alarmingly by
hyper-sensitive microphones. They probably have some editing to do. I
also did a day with a composer called Daniel Pemberton for the tv show
“Runaway”. Most of that was on ukelele, and I got to sit next to the
harpist whose playing was distractingly mesmerising.

I went straight from the ukelele session to what I thought was a
meeting with Chris Martin… but it turned out to be a proper
writing/recording session with him and Natalie Imbruglia. I think they
were expecting me to turn up with all my crazy instruments and laptop
effects, and all I had with me was a ukelele. But we ended up getting
plenty done over the next few days. Chris was an absolute pleasure to
work with, very funny and sweet. The first time I sat down to play
something he said, “Well I’ve heard a lot about you so you’d better be
f*cking good, ” to which I replied “I could say the same to you”. It’s
easy to see why he’s so successful though, he’s a bit of a force of
nature and I hope I get to experience it again.

I played in Marianne Faithfull’s band for a BBC special she did a
couple of weeks back. We had to get 25 songs together with minimal
rehearsal and it was a bit of a scary gig. Also I had to do it without
shoes because I’d sprained my ankle after falling over whilst unloading
my gear so I can only hope the viewing audience won’t be treated to
shots of my bright blue socks (I should have planned ahead I know). I
had a crutch during rehearsals and Marianne took to referring to me
affectionately as ‘my little cripple’. Though thankfully not during the
show.

There was a week of sessions for an album by the legendary
avant-garde French chanteuse Brigitte Fontaine which was just
fantastic, and a good example of the perfect way to make a record in my
view - great studio with loads of old gear in it, wonderfully funny,
relaxed and capable producer (Ivor Guest, who I met doing the Grace
Jones record) and brilliant band including David Coulter, Seb Rochford
and Tom Herbert, and another Leo guitarist from LA whose industrial but
thoughtful style was a real revelation for me. I got to play loads of
instruments from vibes to bass stylophone, and all this was just a
backdrop for Brigittes heart-wrenching and scabrous tales of
degradation.

A couple of other sessions with Beth Rowley finishing off some
writing demos, and a new artist called Gary Go who wanted some
epic-sounding guitars, and that’s about it for this month. Actually one
more thing: I did a gig with Kathryn Williams, which I only got asked
to do on the day as Neil MacColl wasn’t able to do it at the last
minute. There was no way I was going to be able to recreate all Neil’s
parts so I went for a moody ‘reverb and tremolo’ approach. The songs
they do together are so memorable and flowing that I was able to get
the whole set under my belt during the soundcheck, and with Kathryn
leading the way the gig was both fun and somehow charged. After a year
of mostly being in the studio it helped me get in the mood for doing
more performance, perhaps of an improvised nature. So we’ll see if I
can do some of that in March.

Sorry to drone on, if anyone got this far. I just do this for myself
really, so that I can keep track of where the time has flown away to.