Interview with a Waterboy who has a story to tell
Mike Scott reading from his autobiography at Belfast Book Festival in June this year
FOR 30 years, The Waterboys’ Mike Scott has been an inspirational presence in the music world. His new autobiography, Adventures of Waterboy, will not disappoint his legions of followers.
A lyrical, passionate read, it lays bare the story of someone who has lived with a ‘mighty stramash’ of music in his head, unwaveringly pursuing his own, singular musical vision from the river to the sea. On Monday (October 29), he will appear at the Villa Marina Arcade as part of the Three Legs Festival, reading extracts from his work and giving a short acoustic performance with long-term collaborator, fiddler Steve Wickham. Liz Corlett talks to the self-described ‘Walker Between Worlds’ about his singular adventures . . .
{http://www.iomtoday.co.im/lifestyle/manx-entertainment-news/all-new-three-legs-festival-1-5060536 |Click here to read all about the new Three Legs Festival}
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Congratulations on the book, Mike. How’s it been received so far?
Very well! Great reviews, I’m pleased to say, and a great response when I read from it publicly, which is something I enjoy doing.
Had your autobiography been a long time coming?
I had it brewing in my head for a couple of decades. Then I finished a long tour at the end of 2007, and knew that I wouldn’t be on tour again for at least a year. That felt like the right time to start writing the book. I wrote in a very consistent way for about nine months, then moved back to Ireland and was busy setting up my Appointment With Mr Yeats project with The Waterboys, so I wrote a lot more slowly from then on.
Are you happy with the result?
I wouldn’t have published it if I wasn’t!
How does writing compares to the songwriting process? A book is a very solitary thing . . .
Well, I’m a solitary songwriter anyway but it was much more of an intense, sustained piece of work. A song is something that strikes like lightning; a book is month after month of solid graft. Of course, there’s inspiration involved but it was a very disciplined process. I got up at 5.30 every morning and worked for many hours, day after day.
I was struck by the clarity of your recall. Did the writing process cause you to view your past differently?
I already had a keen sense of my past. I’ve had such a colourful life and didn’t need to write the book to get an insight into that. But it was interesting to see what events stood up as most notable in book form – I hadn’t known that certain things would be the ones I’d choose to focus on. The book had its own will, if you know what I mean.
There’s a strong sense of you having followed a path half laid by fate and half by your own drive and intuition. Do you see that combination in yourself – intuitive but also ambitious, determined?
Oh yes, definitely – that describes me, although I’m not always very good at following my intuition. I’m a lot better now, but in the early days I wouldn’t always obey it. It wasn’t until I went to Findhorn [a spiritual community in Moray, Scotland] that I learnt what this little voice inside me was. Well, they call it a voice; it’s more like an inner certainty. I didn’t always trust it – sometimes my mind would say something else, or my fears, and I’d go that way, and then get myself into a whole lot of trouble!
Your sense of Celtic ‘power’ – a creative wellspring – awoke when you went to the West of Ireland. As a Scot, how come you weren’t aware of it before then?
Like so many people, I didn’t fully value where I came from. As a teenager, I always thought that the hip things were happening somewhere else. Maybe it’s because I spent my teenage years in a small town but when I went to Ireland, I recognised my Celtic roots with new eyes and that was a real gift.
Your encounter, age 19, with Patti Smith, and the description of the effects of fame, were fascinating. How have you personally managed that experience?
I was fortunate to be around a lot of artists like Patti Smith in that late 70s period and I saw what effect it had on them. I also spent time backstage with bands like The Clash, The Boomtown Rats, too many to list. I saw how some of them would get pumped up by the attention and success, while others were very grounded, and that gave me examples to follow. When I became well-known myself, that didn’t mean that I knew how to manage the energies that coursed through me; it took me time to get the reins on them. I learnt that it’s great to receive an audience’s attention but it can’t be turned into your reality. You have to let it go 10 minutes after you come off stage. I went too far the other way – became shy of receiving the enthusiastic energies from audiences. When I went to live in Findhorn, I played these little community concerts, and after I’d sung a song, one of the community members came to me and said: ‘I’ve noticed you don’t like receiving the applause. Here’s my challenge to you: next time you perform a song, just stand still and receive the applause.’ And I realised that for years, I had consciously shut the applause out so that it wouldn’t have an effect on me.
Do you think you’ve been misunderstood by the press and public over the years?
Yes, people tend to jump to conclusions. One of the great things for me about writing my book was being able to set the record straight. It’s not that being an artist is a particularly amazing job, and I recognise it as a privilege to make a living out of what I love, but I don’t think it makes me better than anybody else. At the same time, it’s an experiential job – if you’ve never lived it, it’s very hard to understand what goes on. So I’d not do interviews for five years, and people would go, ‘oh, it’s because he hates journalists’. Actually it was because so much was changing with me that I didn’t know how to express it coherently. I’ve actually always liked journalists!
Talking about misconceptions, Mike Scott has had a reputation for ruthlessness, summarily dispatching cohorts over the years. I was minded of Neil Young, who has a similar reputation. Reading the book, the decisions you took all make sense.
Thank-you!
Are you ruthless?
I don’t think I’m as ruthless as Neil (laughs)! I’ve just read his autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace, which I enjoyed greatly. I can see what a commitment he’s made to his sources of inspiration – what he calls the muse. If the muse told him to use a particular ensemble of musicians, he would stop working with the other ones; he realised he had a higher instruction. I’ve acted through that, too, but there’ve been times when I haven’t because I’ve felt loyal to the person. Sometimes, I’ve been slow to makes changes and it’s cost me musically.
The people with whom you have real musical alchemy have stayed by your side. To what extent are your songs Mike Scott compositions and to what extent are they a collaboration?
Well, most of them were written by me and fully developed before I even took them to the band but at the same time, a lot of them got transformed by band members, especially Steve and Anto Thistlethwaite, who tended always to make up their own riffs and hooks. Many songs that bear my songwriting credit, like We Will Not Be Lovers, wouldn’t have been what they were without Steve and Anto. I think of it as a Waterboys concoction.
Creative renewal seems, for you, to come from great change, particularly falling in love with a new place. Where is life is leading you next?
I took an apartment in New York earlier this year, so I’ll be spending more time in the States. I’ve always loved all the different inspirations and influences of New York. The speed of the city. I’ve always been drawn to very intense places. Dublin, where I’ve lived for four years, is beginning to feel a bit too normal to me. I’d like a hit of something else for a change.
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