PETE WYLIE
Box Office
By Paddy Hoey

Quiet and reflective aren't adjectives that are normally used when describing a chat with Pete Wylie, and certainly his style of quiet and reflective is slightly different to say, a Buddhist monk's.

But reflective he is when the Daily Post catches up with him in the week before a unique and (in many ways) historic gig at the Zanzibar on Sunday night.

The Mighty Wah maestro is back on form again with 25 songs recorded for a planned two album foray, to be called Pete Sounds and Smil in homage to the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson. (Wylie says the latter may become the great unreleased album because they have already used up the E for Pete Sounds). It's been what many may consider an amazing burst of creativity from a man not known for being prolific.

And he puts it down to getting out and playing a handful of gigs around Christmas and one magical night in Istanbul. He says, "I tell people this all the time but in Istanbul I had the two best days of my life in one. We played to 20,000 Reds during the day and it was our Woodstock, it was the first time they had really sung (Wylie's paean to his home city) 'Heart as Big as Liverpool' and there was a Heart As Big as Liverpool banner and then we went the game.

"Just being there and experiencing that was amazing – the council even thanked me in minutes afterwards for my Joe Strummer-style rabble rousing. It was just a real buzz to be part of that."

Sunday's gig sees him back in a three piece band and playing in the style of the Wah which played the last night of Eric's club in August 1980.

Wylie's been quiet for a while no records have been in the shops since 2002's reissue compilation Pete Wylie is the Mighty Wah, it's an absence that has seen the man, once described as 'the Elvis of Ullet Road', written off.

In the eyes of many music fans, Wylie went from being a man able to craft hit songs in his sleep (Sinful, Story of the Blues), to merely being the ultimate hanger-on overnight. As one wag put it, he became Jimmy Tarbuck when he could have been Bruce Springsteen.
But those who have written him off fail to take into account the near death experience in 1991 when he fell 15 feet through some railings and was hospitalised for months, ongoing collaborations with the Farm, difficulties with record companies and a confusing private life which have all helped to keep Wylie quiet.

The public perception of him is something that clearly rankles with Wylie, who credits therapist has helping him get his life back on track. "I am buzzing, because I have come back with a great album - I haven't always been rubbish.

"Most people don't know I'm a guitarist, if you saw me on TV you wouldn't know that, in fact most people just think that I am a bevvier. So I want to get back and show them what I can do."

Another factor to get him back on track was meeting a new generation of musicians both within and outside of Liverpool who revere his work with the many manifestations of Wah.

"A lot of the younger bands have told me they liked my work, Gary from the Bandits loved early Wah stuff and Mani from the Stone Roses says he learned to play bass from my first album Nah-Poo. They are more familiar with my early work rather than the famous stuff."

Part of Wylie's compulsion to get this material out was to show people that the talent had never gone away, that he'd always been writing great pop songs whether they had bee getting released or played on the radio or not.

"People tend to think that because I wasn't releasing records that I wasn't writing, but I never stopped.

"That's the part I have always loved, I may have found it difficult to finish things for other people. But I was showing the band the other day, I have a box of lyrics which I would need about seven rolls of wallpaper to get them all down.

"And so when I started recording demos again and was making dark guitar music for the first time in years, I was thinking this was just like Wah Heat, this is great."

He's also in control of his own career again, free of business pressures and owning the rights to his own music for the first time. "It's great to be in the situation where you don't have to compromise yourself for business reasons or because someone else is involved. I can do things for myself."

"People say I could have been bigger and that I have wasted a career. But I think I have had a great career and I have done so many great things, more than I ever thought I would. And I am still doing them.

"I feel like I have found the music again, not that I ever lost it - just I got diverted into other areas. But I enjoy it more and feel a lot more freer because it is mine now, mine completely."

Why Wylie has endured as a figure in music, however peripheral at times, was he was always a fan, always an enthusiast, and his Catholic taste shines through in the new songs. Some of it sounds like Neil Young doing the Beach Boys, he says, other bits like Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. It's a fitting range for a man who, on the last occasion the Daily Post spoke to him, was praising Brian Wilson and British indie rockers Hope of the States in equal measures.

He says: "New songs like Freefallin' could be the Isley Brothers and another Cesspool could be the Stooges, why shouldn't my music sound like that - because I love both those bands. Another song is called England's Mental Health issue sounds like the Beach Boys and is a song about the BNP in Blackburn and Burnley. It's a real contrast and contradiction. I have just always loved music."
Maybe behind the years of struggle and indifference, the enthusiasm for music Wylie harbours has stood him in good stead, and something which gave back to the passion that drives him.

As he says: "When I was growing up in Walton I didn't know who to hang around with. Whether to be with (Bunnyman Ian) McCulloch and the Bowie fans, or the heavy metal fans, or the skinheads because I loved ska and reggae. It was easy for everyone else because they just liked one sort of music."

Taking a millisecond to pause and reflect, he concludes, "You, know mate, I could love golf and make it passionate."

Never a truer word.

Pete Wylie and the Mighty Wah play the Zanzibar on Seel Street on Sunday, August 28, 8pm