Belle And Sebastian Exclusive: Stuart Murdoch in Interview

The Celestial Café is based on the diary you wrote for the Belle & Sebastian website. Why did you start writing the diary?

I found it an easy way to address the B&S fans who were missing out. We didn’t really do interviews back in the day, but I still wanted to communicate, so I just started writing about everyday stuff. Then when I got my first laptop, I thought “OK, this is going to be my project, I’m really going to make a go of this and try to do it every other day”.

Did you find it a useful exercise in terms of writing songs or anything like that?

It was its own thing, but I think always when you jump around various artforms it does help. Like when Belle & Sebastian finished working in 2006 and I went to write a screenplay for a film [God Help The Girl] – I might have run out of inspiration for Belle & Sebastian at that point, but I was ready to try something fresh, so that really fired me up. It’s great to straddle a few things.

Do you ever see yourself sitting down and writing a book from scratch?

Yes, I would like to, because I do love the process of writing, and as I get older and more decrepit and less rock ‘n’ roll, absolutely I would like to write a book. But I never like to do anything unless I get a good, big surge of inspiration, so I’d have to have a good feeling about it – I couldn’t sit down and force myself.

At one point in the book you talk about Bill Drummond and his book, 45. Are there any other books by musicians that you rate?

I suppose the closest would be Simon Napier-Bell, who managed Dusty Springfield in the ‘60s and T-Rex in the ‘70s and Wham! in the ‘80s, and he wrote books to cover all those periods. They’re a really good read. I certainly borrowed from books that I read in the past stylistically for my diaries – part of the reason I thought it might work as a book is that I really love Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby, which is all about football and Arsenal and stuff – the way he writes is episodic, and I thought even if my writing was half his standard I think you would be able to get from start to finish.

One thing that struck me about the book was that you write a lot about Glasgow. Is the city a big influence on you still?

Yeah, absolutely, almost to a silly degree. I feel a bit like Woody Allen at the start of Manhattan. I have a joke with my wife because we know for a fact that people choose to move to Glasgow and do degrees in Glasgow because of Belle & Sebastian and sometimes because of what I’ve written. My wife’s from America and she says [American accent] “I don’t know, babe, all these people are gonna turn up and they’re gonna ask for their money back.” Cos you make it sound a lot better than it is, it’s just a big city – oh God, she’s standing right behind me! But, yeah, I do lean on the city in all sorts of ways – the way it looks, the way it feels. Especially in the time since I’ve been trying to write the screenplay, I just spend the whole time walking around all over the place.

The book mentions Franz Ferdinand and Camera Obscura at the time when they were first starting to emerge. Are there any bands in Glasgow at the moment we should know about?

It’s funny in this day and age – you used to be able to reel off a couple of buzz bands, but because music’s so disparate these days, you could mention a band and never hear of them again. There’s a guy called Finlay [MacDonald] who used to be in BMX Bandits and he’s got a project called Lenzie Moss, he sent me the new EP and I really loved that, I’ve been listening to that a lot. Butcher Boy gave me their new record and it’s kept up their high standard. I must admit, Glasgow could do with something electrifying coming out of it, something new that gets you excited.

You mentioned the God Help The Girl film. Is that still ongoing?

Very much so. I’ll be chatting with my producer about it next week, we’re trying to raise funds for it at the minute which is equally as hard as writing the thing in the first place. I’m absolutely determined to make it into a film because the way that I hear and see the songs won’t be fully worked out until they’re in the film. They are musical-type songs, and I won’t do them justice until they’re living and breathing in three dimensions.

It must be quite a long-term thing, because you mention it in the book at one point.

I’m sure I did, I think I hinted at it ages ago. I remember getting the first spark when I was on a run in Sheffield in 2004 or something. That was the first song and that night I got the title God Help The Girl from the song and that inspired everything that came after. I think I joked at one point [in the book] that this is going to take a year of my life, and it ended up taking three.

You curated the Bowlie 2 festival at the end of last year, how was that for you?

It was great. It was a busy old weekend and I was a little bit nervous that we’d bitten off more than we could chew because it was in the middle of quite a busy period for the band, doing gigs with orchestras, which was quite hard. And then suddenly we had to curate Bowlie at the end of it. But it was so well-organised, it was really a pleasure. By the time we got up to play on the Saturday night, there were many more people than we were expecting, it was almost a Bestival crowd. I remember just before going on adjusting the setlist and knocking off a few of the quiet ones.

How did the band choose the line-up? Was it a democratic process?

Yeah, we all had to pick five bands each. I think Richard and maybe Chris picked more up-to-date bands, and I’m glad they did, because otherwise it would just be old ‘80s and ‘90s bands. Unfortunately, a lot of Mick’s bands couldn’t do it and then we drafted in some other groups, so some people ended up with more of their own choices. But it was a fair representation by the end.

The last Belle & Sebastian album, Write About Love, has been out for a few months now. How do you feel it’s been received?

The only way I know how it’s been received is when we play the songs live. I try to avoid reviews and suchlike. Once I’ve mastered the LP, it’s all over for me. I don’t feel any need to play all the songs, we just play the ones we feel like playing. We’d start the gigs every night with Sarah’s song from the record [I Didn’t See It Coming] and that seemed to be a favourite. Then we’d play I Want The World To Stop, which seems to be going down well. I think the band overall feel a real sense of satisfaction about having written that record and we’re all really pleased with how it sounds. So, job done.

There was quite a long gap between the last two records…

We did take three years off between 2006 and 2009. It wasn’t until the start of 2010 that we got together to get that batch of songs together, so we figured we worked quite hard. It was quite productive for us.

Are you planning on doing another LP any time soon?

I think when Belle & Sebastian are working, like just now, we always like to have a record on the go. We’re thinking about it and we’ve got something planned, a kind of thematic record, and we’re gonna meet quite soon and start pulling ideas. So we might stick that down in the summer when we’re done touring.

FOR A REVIEW OF THE CELESTIAL CAFE AND MORE FROM THE STUART MURDOCH INTERVIEW
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