Philip Wilding's Blog

Summer, Highland Falls

philipwilding — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 13:43:29 +0000

It’s strange that a song written by a New Yorker about a place I’ve never been can cause such a reverie. The above title was written by Billy Joel, I think it was from Turnstiles, forgive me if I’m wrong, and whenever I hear it, as I just did, then I’m back in a classroom in Wales studying A level English with Mr. Millington. For those of you who’ve read my book – Cross Country Murder Song, Vintage imprint coming soon! – you might have noticed his name in the dedication. He and The Boy (more of whom another time), got both barrels of my love, I managed to catch up and reacquaint myself with The Boy before he died, but I never got to say goodbye to Millington and I’m sorry about that as he truly turned my life around.

It was the mid-80s or thereabouts, Ted was originally from Birmingham and how he ended up in our small, Welsh valley is still something of a mystery. Everyone has their Dead Poets Society moment I suppose and he was mine. All the girls were infatuated by this short man in a duffle coat with a bowl haircut, the boys in the class either loved or loathed him. I wavered between both. He was astute, sharp and funny and seemed to care, which was unnerving at best, my home life was a lesson in abandonment; three individuals trying to hold on the ever brittle strands of family. We were doomed from the minute my father walked out on us. Ted had issues of his own, a son he loved and doted on and what looked like a long dead marriage. A few years later, he and another teacher (she taught Home Economics and made the boys in the sixth form pant like tired bloodhounds) pretty much ran away together. He never did things lightly so it must have crushed him to give up on his family unit, no matter how badly they were listing.

But I’m getting away from how he taught us; with verve and style and, mostly, with heart. He taught us The Great Gatsby at a time when I was at war with the world. I didn’t want to hear about America’s Jazz Age or its most glittering participants, I wanted the land leveled, I wanted someone to pay for the pain I was feeling. Ted wouldn’t give up on us though, he drove Fitzgerald’s brilliant text into our consciousness, taught us the spare beauty of his dazzling prose, he taught us that knowledge is power, freeing too. Mostly he taught me that I didn’t have to stay in that place, both geographically and mentally, he set me free and I don’t think he did it unwittingly. He saw something in me that I must have missed. He saw past the anger and the hurt, reigniting my love of writing and reading, he kicked open a long closed door. It was no surprise that when I got my first tattoo some years later it was the last paragraph of The Great Gatsby around my thigh and it was as much about my love of the written word as it was a man who pulled me from my own infernal wreckage.

He became gravely ill in the same Welsh hospital as The Boy, both beginning their long descent into oblivion from beneath those same sheets. Old school friends tried to contact me for the funeral – an event literally filled with hundreds and hundreds of pupils, present and past – but I was in London then, travelling abroad for magazine work, moving homes, trying to gain some purchase on the world, trying to make my mark. By the time news reached me, he was set resting on a Welsh hillside at the end of his far too short journey. I’m working on my second novel now and had sat down today to write, but not about him or this, I’d almost forgotten a lot of it. But there wouldn’t have been a Cross Country Murder Song without him, hell, there wouldn’t have been magazine articles, memoirs, TV scripts, radio work, I’d have been rotting in my own personal hell, thinking about what might have been, still blaming the world, railing against the picturesque landscape outside, self-contained and always, always confined. Thank you, Ted Millington, my words of appreciation are long overdue.

Working Man

philipwilding — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 18:14:58 +0000

Somehow I let the summer go by without writing anything down. Actually, that’s not true, I spent a few months working absurdly long hours ghosting a memoir. It’s a strange if lucrative gig. You spend hours with your subject, pore over the very bones of their being, make their voice come to life on the page and then nothing. It’s like the longest one night stand ever. The book comes out, you hardly recognise huge swathes of it – but then you did think the editor was a tosser all along – and you’ve already made one enemy for life and realised how lucky you are to have a human being for an agent. The money was good though, I spent it on making my debts look less ugly and teaching the dog to love ice cream. Shortly afterwards the vet told me Ralph was overweight, I held up my hands in a display of horrified shock, but you could tell she wasn’t buying it especially as I was feeding the mutt a tub of Ben & Jerry’s at the time.

Otherwise, I’ve been to New York, The Green Man festival (which was terribly wet even by soggy Welsh standards), I got stuck in Philadelphia and Columbus (sadly, they aren’t the names of two strippers I met) and went to LA on the hottest day on record. It was the kind of weather that killed Tarantino’s editor, it caused me to lay on the floor of my hotel room with the AC on full doing my best not to move too much. I’ve been to court too for all the good that did. I saw men beating up another man, then I went to court and told the judge that and they let them off because of lack of evidence. It made me feel rather ineffectual, like so much smoke being shooed out of an open window. Much more happily, I did a live Q&A with Rush’s Geddy Lee last night at a cinema in London. He was good value, he’s always good value, as were the incredibly keen audience. Though they did swarm all over Geddy like a scene from The Walking Dead once we were done. I could hardly push past them to get to the bar. One short man with a red face asked my name and then told me I was annoying, I was tempted to push him down the stairs and stand on his neck until he turned puce, but I let him have his moment and let his little legs carry him home to his undoubtedly ugly and frumpy wife and his two kids who hate him, I imagine. I hope he’s been hit by a car today. More good news; I interviewed Gail Zappa on Friday and we got along famously, so much so that she invited me up to the family house to see where Frank worked the ‘next time I was in LA’. I’m currently checking my air miles… Oh, and I fell out with Nicky Wire and then made it up again. Sorry, I’m dropping names and condensing timelines with a flagrant disregard for convention, but fuck it, no, fuck you. Which is what I said to Wire. I didn’t.

We have a live Perfect 10 in Manchester on Saturday, as usual Phill and I have done next to nothing in terms of preparation yet, there’ll be a flurry of activity and panic on Thursday when we’ll actually pick up the phone to each other and debate what we’re going to do. The last one in London went over pretty well so I suspect that one of us will fall off the stage at the very least this time. If it’s Phill and you’re in the front row then I apologise in advance, but it’s your own fault for being so keen. At least you’ll make the papers, even if it is just the Manchester Evening News.

Ralph the Bastard

philipwilding — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 11:30:00 +0000

To his eternal credit the dog really does look like an Ewok, but as I’ve got a life and very little time on my hands (and George Lucas brandishes lawyers like Darth swings a lightsabre) I’ve resisted dressing him up in a cowl and taking pictures of him. There are enough of those images on the web as it is. Anyway, he’s called Ralph and he’s hit our house the way a tornado fucked up Kansas in a Wizard Of Oz. I have a cage pretty much next to my side of the bed now, an actual cage, Katie Price’s latest husband could fight for a title belt in there and I think there’d be enough room. Ralph sits in its corner and snores. At first we assumed he was having an asthma attack as he sleeps sitting upright and with his eyes open. It’s like we’ve adopted Damon from The Omen. He’s snoring as I write, but with his face pressed hard against his favourite towel. Oh yes, he has a favourite towel, he has lots of things, the entire run of the house and our hearts being just two of them. I still feel guilt and shame when I look at a photo of my cat and finding out that Ralph was born around the time Sylvain died did nothing but reduce me to quiet tears (not because I imagined a transfer of souls, I have about as much faith in the idea of a god as I do my agent), but because it seemed to compound the idea that I was cheating on her bones and had abandoned her somehow. I sound like a Catholic.

Not that I’m going to get mawkish about her or him. It’s hard to fall hard for a hound whose pee you’ve stepped in at 3am and realised that given the right combination of low lighting and no socks you can actually scream like a little girl. I woke the dog too. And Nuala. She gave me the skunk eye and rolled over muttering about having to get up early for work so I pulled the quilt off her and dumped her on the bedroom floor. She made a noise like air leaving a deflating balloon. Ralph was her idea. I walked him in the rain the next morning and felt hopelessly romantic though, I imagined a black and white shot of me and him leaning into the hail and wind and passers-by taking that image with them to the tube and saying how heroic we both looked and then going out at lunchtime to buy my book and praise me in whispering tones. Novelist, humanist, vegetarian, dog-walker… That sort of thing. As it was we both looked defeated by the drizzle and I took two plastic bags in case Ralph felt the urge to answer the call of nature in Kentish Town. He didn’t. He waited until we got home, which meant I probably didn’t need to go out in the rain after all. Best not dwell on that last point.

In other news (and thank the good lord for that), the Laugharne Weekend is almost upon us, I travel down Saturday in hope of catching Julian Cope doing his irrepressible thing and then get to share a billet with Kevin Allan, uncle to Lily. The full bill’s quite tremendous and I make up a very small part of it on the Sunday at 2pm with Nicky Wire and then at 5.30pm with his brother, the poet Patrick Jones. If you happen to be in the town Dylan Thomas based Under Milk Wood on then come by and buy a copy of my book, I’ll almost certainly chat to you then. Before then we record a new Perfect Ten, we’ve already slid back on our promise to make them fortnightly, and I’ve been enjoying new music from the Stone Temple Pilots (yes, I was surprised too) and Taylor Hawkins (ditto) and former Kyuss man Brant Bjork. That made me want to smoke a doobie and I mean that in the good way even though I pretty much detest dope as it slows me down. I once snorted vodka and had to smoke dope to stop me throwing up or my head exploding, I forget which. I’ve also rediscovered the A Boy Named Goo record and the debut Chris Cornell album, Euphoria Morning, both gems and for very different, very valid reasons. Anyway, I need to pick some CCMS passages to read this weekend, wish me luck, I’ll almost certainly snort with derision at your good wishes. The window’s open and the dog’s barking at something unseen and unheard outside, best get used to that I suppose…

Wheels

philipwilding — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 11:28:27 +0000

I can’t remember the last time I was interviewed, I think it must have been when Phill and I were at 6 Music, someone came in to ask us why we were both Apple devotees or when we did an outside broadcast at a student radio station somewhere. It’s fuzzy and I imagine we did our usual thing; made seventeen different in-jokes until the interviewer got glassy eyed and sort of gave up on us. Quite rightly too. We’ll never be half as funny as we think we are when we’re showing off and we used to show off a lot. Anyway, the Booktrust gave the novel a very nice review (http://www.booktrust.org.uk/show/book/search/Cross-Country-Murder-Song) and then they asked if they could interview me. I said yes. Very nice it was too and they bought me a Marmite (I haven’t eaten Marmite since my cat died, long story) bagel and numerous coffees and asked me some pretty engaging questions, including what music I listened to when I wrote. I wasn’t even sure myself, but it’s Bill Evans in the main, some Herbie Hancock too, I can’t listen to lyrics when I write fiction, though I can when I’m working on my journalism, weirdly. I can’t read fiction when I’m writing fiction either (I’m inbred, what can I tell you?) so I’m currently reading The Journals Of John Cheever. His home life can best be described as complex. Like a Gordian Knot is complex. Its good though, what a brilliant voice he was.

Post-interview I had a date with Random House and booksellers from all over the country who were sizing up the autumn release schedules like a stag party appraising a stripper. I’m not on the schedule, the Vintage edition of CCMS will be with you in February 2011 – like you care. It was good to see everyone though, I scared Tom the editorial assistant by telling him that I’d had a dream about him, I think he actually took a step backwards at the news and all the authors present sized each other up with sideways glances and barely concealed contempt. I took solace in the fact that the wine was free and that if we all ended up in prison I would almost certainly be the Daddy in a roomful of men who looked like substitute teachers. Hell, some of them might even be substitute teachers. It’s such a solitary existence writing that you think we’d make more of a night out on Random House’s coin, but I left early and I certainly wasn’t the first out of the door. It was good to see Dan, Vicki and Clara though (Team Wilding as I call them in my head, if I said it out loud they’d lynch me), the last time we were in a room together was at my launch party and the less said about that the better.

Otherwise, it’s been the usual mix of interviews (me doing the interviews not the other way around), a birthday and a very boozy weekend in Brighton where we took on the whiskey list at the Great Eastern pub and lost quite convincingly. Musically, I’ve rediscovered Chris Cornell’s excellent Euphoria Morning album - I’ve been writing about him – and tipping my hat to Big Star after the sad news of Alex Chilton’s untimely death. Hell, when is death ever timely? The new Jesse Malins album has a lot of heart (and some very good songs too) as does the Coheed album. And we’re thinking about buying a dog, I’ll need the company when Book 2 breaks my heart like a cheap vase. I want to call him Thursday, Nuala’s less keen… More on that sooner than I’d probably like.

Snow globes, one for every time he’d killed

philipwilding — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:05:18 +0000

After three missed calls, about eighteen e-mails and any number of exasperated sighs I finally tied up the interviews with two parts of ELP this week. Greg Lake on Tuesday and Keith Emerson last night. For the teenagers among you this won’t mean much, but for men of a certain age ELP once strode the earth like a classically-trained behemoth. The keyboard player used to stab his organ (Hammond, this was before public self-harming was popular) and they once took an orchestra on tour, it cost them £6 million all told. This was in 1977 and caused what you might refer to as a rift in the band, they broke up two years later and said mean things about each other publicly. They’re now as close to being firm friends as they’ll ever be and due to play a one-off show (which might evolve into a few dates) at the High Voltage Festival at Victoria Park in London this summer. I’m actually excited. I know some of you look at me and think, Wilding, misanthrope, never dances alone at home or tells knock-knock jokes to inanimate objects or gets excited at the prospect of anything, but I do. Rarely, but it happens. Roxy Music and ELP both playing the same grassy knoll a week apart, I’m almost punching the air right here at my desk. You should come, we’ll drink pear cider and forget where we parked the car and then remember that we don’t have a car and that I can’t drive. That’s a good Sunday by any standards. Anyway, the interviews were great, Greg fell over in rehearsal and Keith’s condo flooded (not while we were chatting, that would mean I was bad luck), but they were still both relatively chipper. Roll on July.

Elsewhere, CCMS came out in Canada this week or it was meant to. My Canuck friends (Moose, Mountie and Geddy as I call them) couldn’t find it for love nor money. It doesn’t come out in Australia next week either. I’m hoping you’ll prove me wrong, Australia! On a book tip, I actually drafted the first chapter of the new novel earlier this week, all 5300 words of it. I think it’s good. The agent thinks it’s great, I thought he’d had a stroke or been given three months to live when I got that email (and if he has that won’t be a quarter as funny). I’ve decided that I’ve got to get it done before the Vintage paperback of CCMS comes out in February 2011. Imagine beards, tears and a lot of shouting – a bit like touring with ZZ Top in the Seventies I’d imagine – until then, poor Nuala, she has to listen to me tell jokes to the fridge as it is. I feel good about it though, I feel like it can be done. I wasn’t sure the magic hadn’t run out of me after book 1 (as it’s now known) was done. It’s the Laugharne Festival with Nicky Wire next month and then the Litro stage as part of the Camden Crawl (whenever that is) and then, delightfully, I’m doing Green Man as are the Flaming Lips and Billy Bragg! I sort of know Billy (he once wrote a song for me and Phill) so I’m going to stand by him and ask him to dedicate Levi Stubbs’ Tears to me when he plays and then drink pear cider with him and ask him if he wants to arm wrestle. It’s good to have a plan in place before you set out on these things. One more book thing; a friend of mine saw a girl reading Cross Country Murder Song on the Northern Line, I hope she’s alright.

ELP aside, I’m also writing my second Soundgarden article in a matter of months (it’s handy having toured with all these bands who are now making a comeback – I’m looking at my Faith No More gold disc as I write) and interviewing Train at some point. Their new album’s rather pretty. As is The Pineapple Thief CD, I’d tell you what it’s called if I could remember, but it’s out in May and could make them rich enough that they’ll all have racehorses by the end of the year. Oh and my pen came back, my righteous, ludicrously expensive fountain pen is fixed. Thankfully, I have some books to sign. Apropos of nothing, I’m forty-four next week, I really should get a haircut. Have a weekend.

Old friends, bookends, etc.

philipwilding — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:51:06 +0000

A wet Thursday night on the Archway Road acted as the backdrop to what would turn out to be a fairly difficult (breach) birth to my first novel, Cross Country Murder Song. There were around a hundred people there in all at the very fetching Boogaloo, which put me in mind of some of the old rock and roll bars I used to frequent/haunt on tour. Great jukebox, nice bar, two cats pretty much running the room. They’d set up a small stage for us on which Dan Franklin (greatest editor ever, Napalm Death fan and one of the few people with the balls to take a punt on my book) stood and told the gathering that there was something wrong with me, which he liked very much indeed. Some days I feel exactly the same way.

I got up and wore the crowd down and over the next hour or so (interspersed with some excellent tunes by Mules and Ewing – my favourite law firm), I read three parts from the book, Porn, Fallen and Holiday, though not in that order. I was accompanied by Grant Moon (made infamous by The Perfect Ten, sorry Moon) who belied first night nerves with a brilliant telling of one of the book’s many Choruses and brought the passage where the driver’s paranoia keeps him locked in his car pissing in a variety of containers to vivid life. He got the biggest laugh of the night too and reminded that the book was funny and that was something that the critics had missed.

Willie Dowling (Jackdaw 4, check out their site especially the song Rosebud which was partly inspired by CCMS) was up next, he chose Box (Reprise), but had come more to tell the world what was wrong with popular culture and why a book like mine might be important. I’m not sure it’s important at all (it’s not), but I couldn’t have written it at all without Willie helping along the way. He was fired and a little angry and he caught the damage and danger of CCMS in the breaking ire of his words. Jupitus had picked Plastic, he reckoned that months of playing a woman on stage in Hairspray had given him some sort of affinity with the female lead in that chapter. He was tremendous, a comic he may be, but he can act, really act. I first realised that when we recorded an ad for the Beeb years ago, but that’s another lifetime. Anyway, he brought his performing game to bear and made the character addicted to plastic surgery really come to life. I felt sorry for her all over again, I still wanted her to win, but she didn’t.

Al three were kind/good enough to credit my words, but they gave them colour on the night. It was good to feel them come off the page. They were vivid and lively, funny and cruel, it sounded like a book I might have wanted to write. There was a little disarray later on when someone who should have known better got as drunk as a character in a Tom Waits’ song and decided to tell me what exactly was wrong with my book and me as a human being. I couldn’t have cared less, but it upset some people I care about very much. That aside, the book’s out now, I went and stared at it in Waterstones and Foyles and it made me feel as warm as I might have hoped. It appears to be selling pretty well for a debut too. We’ll see.

On a different tip, people keep asking me if BBC 6 Music is closing down, I really don’t know. Phill wrote a very good piece about it for the Guardian website on Friday, accompanied by a very old picture of us. I saw the editor at my launch and I’m not sure he knew either. The Kaki King album is great as is the Kick-Ass movie. This week I’m interviewing Killing Joke, reviewing Dan Reed at the Union Chapel, going to see the Rush documentary and then John Waite at the Underworld in Camden. Like Jethro Tull, I’m currently living in the past.

Living in the limelight, the universal dream…

philipwilding — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 12:44:13 +0000

Not to drop names, but I’m about to, Neil Peart (look him up) once told me that the song Limelight was his most personal lyric. Moving Pictures was Rush’s biggest album, Limelight one of the most recognisable songs from said album. It talked about the downside of fame – which Rush had a lot of at that time. Peart hated it, he hated being recognised, he hated people acting as if they knew him, when in fact they only knew his music and onstage persona. He now admits that he took it all a little too much to heart. I was thinking about this, hell, I was talking about this on a wet Monday in Hammersmith. I was being filmed for the Classic Albums series and they asked me about Limelight and I was suddenly backstage in Nashville again or was it in a rehearsal space in Toronto, both places had one thing in common, Neil’s ludicrous drum kit sitting in the corner, dominating the room. It sat on a riser in Toronto, I recognised that kit from the tour before and asked him if I could sit behind it. Sure, he said, he may furrow his brow with concentration when they play live, but he is both sweetness and light, pretty goofy too and he loves cigarettes and books, he’s easy to take to. I sat there and it was like being on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, the drums went on forever, it was a nonsense, I had no idea where to start or end. I tentatively tapped one of a hundred drums and Neil smiled up at me, the smoke from his cigarette curling around his head and reaching for the lofty ceiling. When I’d finished the interview he signed a book for me, wishing me good luck with my novel that was still unfinished and with no deal in sight and we shook hands on it.

On Wednesday I went to look at the venue where the book launch will take place, I’d love to tell you that Neil will be there, he won’t, Rush are making a new album, they’re a bit busy. It’s a nice bar, a roomful of history and two cats who pretty much have the run of the place. One came over to stare at me as I met the owner and he bought me a drink, the owner not the cat. It sounds foolish, but the cats calmed my nerves more about the publication and launch than a hundred reassuring words from friends could. I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m not enjoying the home straight, I’m twitchy and desperate for a drink almost all the time. The agent has told me to enjoy it, but I’m not sure how I might do that. I’ve wanted to publish a novel since I was twelve and now I am and it feels a bit hollow if I’m honest. Not hollow, I don’t have a word for it, but I’m filled with unease instead of the light I’d imagined. It will be nice to be in a room filled with people I admire and like though, that I’m looking forward to.

In happier news, The Pineapple Thief album is great and not at all what I was expecting as is the Coheed and Cambria record, the Jesse Malins band album too. I might be going to Prague to talk to Killing Joke, I’ve spent a week writing about Australian vacuum cleaners, which was lucrative and oddly fun, I’m interviewing C&C (they’re politer than Rush and that’s saying something) and the Times Online are running an extract from the novel in the next few days, we’re expecting reviews soon. I might take to my bed with a bottle, but then it is almost the weekend. That’s normal, right?

Pinned to the stars, your father’s face among the heavens…

philipwilding — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:06:41 +0000

Friday morning, I can hear the sound of the shower in the next room. Bob Dylan’s on the radio and someone’s just asked me to write about an Australian vacuum cleaner for cash and I’m thinking about it. It’s been a strange week (not to get too Garrison Keillor about it), Danny Baker’s Show on BBC London on Monday and Tuesday where the great man let me plug my book with aplomb while still paying me to act as his sidekick, like Danny needs a sidekick. And since we last spoke The Sunday Telegraph put me in their ten new novelists to watch this year and Pulse magazine (the thunderer or thereabouts for all NHS staff or so I’m reliable informed) said some very nice things about the book, I was touched, I still am. The Independent on Sunday have promised to review as have the Guardian site and the Times Online have asked me to write something on their site and plug the book off the back of it, I’ve said yes. All of this and then Willie from Jackdaw 4 (certified genius, but he won’t hear a word about it) mailed to say that CCMS and Citizen Kane (what company I suddenly keep!) had inspired him to write a new song, he then sent me a demo of said song and worried over it the way a cow does a new calf. He need not have fretted, even in demo form it’s magnificent and dark and reminds me why Willie puts me in mind of a brooding Brian Wilson and not just because they have the same shaped face. I’m currently on the Jackdaw 4 website acting like a nerk, but they let me plug my book in a video clip ostensibly put up there to promote their band, they are very good people.

I also fell out with my publicist and the man booking my live readings this week too. Not for long and without any real damage, but it did remind me to keep an eye on my quickly escalating temper and not to send emails when I’m in a rage. Or drunk. Or drunk and in a rage. It was a mix up at the venue and neither Richard or Clara’s fault, but I was pointed at the venue’s website by a friend to find that they were advertising the book launch (which I wanted to be kept private anyway, unlike Tennessee Williams I do not rely on the kindness of strangers) as a comedy night with myself and Phill J! I went up the wall, over it and landed on the other side making sounds in the back of my throat akin to those a dog makes when you get too near its food. I was stressed to start with, some of my so called friends (actual and real friends who were quite normal until a buzz started building around the novel) have begun to act very strangely around me. Saying and doing things that have both angered and saddened me, I’m in a real panic about publication as it is so you can imagine my delight to find out that their egos somehow had to have an impact on a book that it spent me over a year in solitude (not like in the TV show Oz, that would just be wrong, beside they wouldn’t let me have a pen in there in case I made a makeshift shank out of it) to write. Anyway, the venue argument’s over and myself, Richard and Clara are going up there next week to look the place over, we might take sandwiches. I’ve suggested staying in the bar all day to talk things over, but they both gave me a look like I’d just set fire to their clothes.

Next week, Monday in fact, I film the Classic Albums show, I’m talking about Rush’s 2112 and Moving Pictures, Nicky Wire’s doing it too. I’ve no idea of the TX date, but then I’m not sure they do either. I’ve also just contributed liner notes to another Rush best of called Time Stand Still. There’s talk of me going to Toronto in April too, but that’s just talk for the moment. I’ve recently very much enjoyed a film called Dogtooth, though I’m not sure I ever want to see it again no matter how brilliant it was. I endured Shank, which was odious and pallid and the new White Stripes doco about their very unique Canadian tour of 2007, it’s beautifully shot and quite revealing all in all, it made me want to see them play live again too, which surprised me as their audience is wall to wall victims, you know the type, one haircut, braying at the bar about vinyl, usually young and no idea what Motown is or was. The twats. Though, that’s not the fault of the White Stripes.

I digress, it’s twenty days to publication and counting and i have The Fear. If you see me, buy me a drink, I’ll probably need it. I’ll see you when I’m around this way again.

Stay off the road

philipwilding — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:39:17 +0000

On Friday I had lunch around the corner from Random House, it wasn’t free though, what lunch is? For my pizza, two glasses of red and the delightful company of Clara the PR and Vicki the marketing kid (she is a a kid, she’s twelve and had her own corner office at RH already, I’m very lucky to have her working me as it were), I had to sit in front of a shelf full of my books and answer questions about my dead dad (the first of many when the book finally surfaces I assume), my favourite writers, the cinematic feel of my novel and then I had to read from the Holiday chapter. The latter was the most nerve wracking of all, contrary to popular belief I hate the sound of my own voice and I loathe how I look especially on screen. On the upside the power and invention of the passage shocked me, the words sang, I believed in the killer who spends his holidays murdering strangers, I stood with him on the beach as he watched his mother drown, I looked over his shoulder as he choked the life out of a young woman… I couldn’t get out of his hotel room, I couldn’t get out of his head, I took that as a good sign. If you’re at all interested, and I must assume you are if you’ve showed up here, my little performance will be up on the new Jonathan Cape website at the end of the month. I also wore foundation for it, Nuala very kindly applied her own with real diligence so that I assumed a sort of golden glow as I left home.

The book’s published on the 25th February and the Independent on Sunday have said they’ll review it, this makes my skin crawl in ways I thought unimaginable. I love the fact that I’ve got a novel that’s being published by Jonathan Cape, but I’d be quite happy if they did one copy and let me keep it in a sealed box that i might take out and occasionally show to people. That’s not how it works. Waterstone’s are giving it quite the push, people have pre-ordered it online and someone’s already bought it on their Kindle. These tiny things sound like giant, crashing waves in my head and the current’s coming in. I’ve also got some more festivals lined-up, including a reading for the Litro people at the Camden Crawl. What skinny boys with angular haircuts might see in my book remains a mystery, but I’ll show up and scowl and hopefully sell another half dozen books or punch a Foals fan, it could go either way. I’m unstable at the best of times. We’re having a book launch too, which my editor Dan Franklin is attending. This is big news, Dan only leaves his office or home if someone’s waving a gun at him. He might even make a speech. Jupitus and I will try not to heckle. Happily, two of my oldest and dearest friends may be flying in to help me celebrate, one from Beruit the other from the wilds of Canada. It’ll do nothing to steady my nerves, but I’ll be delighted to see them both, they’ve both been around long enough to know how much realising this dream means to me. I’d invite you, but I know how busy you are.

I’m heading off into the London night now to meet one of Rush’s people (Peg as her sister calls her), I see her far too infrequently, she’s the size of a Munchkin and louder than war, I like her very much. That and she sometimes gets Atlantic Records to fly me to Toronto doesn’t hurt either. Recently I’ve very much enjoyed the Blur documentary – my one word quote is on the poster – and the Oil City Confidential film, which details the rise and fall of Dr Feelgood. And due to having moved house, I’m re-reading what Nuala rather archly refers to as “Wilding’s fucking library”. But in a nice way. What books there are! But more on that next time. Come join me on my Facebook CCMS page, you might win signed books or a very rare T-shirt, or even get to join me and Jupes on launch night. Or you can just simply enjoy watching my fear effervesce as the 25th looms…

Below is a photo of my cat Sylvain, she died a few months ago and I miss her more than I can actually articulate. It sounds sad and strange, but I really regret that she won’t get to see the book published. Let’s never speak of this again as I’m crying as I write. Next time then.

Heavy words so lightly thrown, etc.

philipwilding — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 09:22:45 +0000

Good Morning,

It’s hot tea inside, gunship grey outside, winter’s snapping and the ludicrous Parka I brought back from a freezing Chicago now doesn’t seem quite so stupid. I actually got coat envy on my local train platform the other morning, as the masses (including the tiniest member of the Random House staff who’s a neighbour) huddled under the awning by the ticket office I strode past with Eye Of The Tiger (“It’s the thrill of the fight… and he’s watching us all with eyeeeeeeee of the tiger!”) thumping in my head and made my way to my spot on the platform. You could feel them all bristle, the green eyed monster clinging to their backs. Sad to say I really do have a spot on the platform, there’s a white painted arrow there where the doors always open welcomingly up, I think the rail network god put it there so I don’t eventually go postal on my commute into work, I think we can all agree that it’s some kind of sign.

Anyway, I’m sure you didn’t all show up here to listen to tales of my wonderful, dreamy, cocoon like Parka coat of an indeterminate colour, you came to hear about the book or the Perfect Ten or why I haven’t had my hair cut in months. Okay, maybe not the haircut, though I could really do with one. Anyway, Cross Country Murder Song, three things have happened, was it three? The first two editors at Random House in the USA have turned it down, one said the voice wasn’t authentic, the other that they didn’t like the structure. It has a structure more complex than the Gordian Knot so I imagine it might have confused someone used to poring over the work of American authors and their linear plots all day long. I kid, though almost all the American writers I like are dead, sadly. I worried about capturing the American voice so I sent it to Serge from Marah (never heard of them? Hang your fucking head in shame), who’s now a full time dad so he has lots of time to read. He never questioned the voice, I mention this as he’s incredibly well read and happens to have been born in the land of the free. He loved it, he gave me quite the critique, I’m happy to report that it was glowing. He also has a very good blog: http://www.thunderpie.net/

It went off to a few other musicians too, James from the Manics picked up a copy from the office that was originally meant for Nicky Wire. I mention this as I think some people think that all Welsh writers and musicians live in a big house on a windswept hill dotted with sheep in Carmarthen. We don’t, I’ve never even been to Carmarthen. I know Wire, I’ve met James sparingly, he’s quiet in that Welsh way that I’m not; he observes mostly mutely, is succinct in his summations, he also wrote a brilliant solo album and the melody for A Design For Life. I can barely whistle or play a recorder at schoolboy level and I’m rarely quiet. An aside: backstage at the Royal Festival Hall, me and the Manics and their agent and PR, champagne and Grey Goose vodka, ask me if you see me. No one was mute that night. I digress… James finished the novel and I asked if he might give me a quote for the cover/press release as Nicky had done. It went quiet (I assume he was observing mutely, see above) and I gave up on the idea and then James called me. To say he was effusive is to understate the point, but he used phrases like, “best book I’ve read this year” and gave me a wonderful, well thought out quote (he admitted he’d struggled with it) for the cover. Being Welsh, I couldn’t thank him enough so we both buttoned our emotions down and talked about how badly the Welsh team did in the autumn internationals and how things were progressing on the next MSP album and all was alright with the world.

Then on Monday, just as I was about to go and watch the very impressive Marillion in the equally impressive surroundings of Cadogan Hall, Willie Dowling called. He’s in a very good band called Jackdaw 4, he was in a handful of other equally good bands; Honeycrack, The Grip, Cat People… Willie, and this might be why we’re friends, is about as impressed with the world and its people as I am, ie, not at all. He writes music for TV and films now and plays live with his band about as often as I smile at strangers on the tube or join stupid fucking, inane groups on Facebook (please stop inviting me you cretins). He’s good is Willie, fiercely bright, though hindered by rubbish stubble. He said nice things about the book too (I’m repeating myself I know), said it would make a great film, he has more enthusiasm for it than I do, but then I am fed up of the whole fucking thing already. American editors rejecting it will do that to a man.

An aside: Amazon have been emailing me asking if I’d like to buy the Lady Gaga album in time for Christmas. The last thing I bought on there was the Paris Review compendium of author interviews so I’m not sure what signal I’m sending the huge online retailer that they think I’ll buy some album by that vacuous cunt. Or perhaps they’re simply staffed by morons or just blinded by their own greed and want all their stock shifted in time for Christmas, the twats? Or they saw Paris and thought I meant Paris Hilton? I do hope not. On higher and more noble ground, might I recommend a few things I’ve seen, read and heard recently (like you care)? The Blur movie; No Distance Left To Run, the next Frightened Rabbit album, a documentary called Food, Inc and two books, one called The Forever War the other Flat Earth News. I’d explain more, but I’ve taken up enough of your time already. I’m trying to move house and extract money from Women’s Fitness magazine, I’d advise you to never ever work for them, they’re about as welcome at my house as Amazon. I’m at Kingston University on Friday to speak to the students, come by and we’ll take bets on how long it takes before I smack some dickhead in the audience for attempting to heckle me. As my American friends often say at this time of year, happy holidays…