Original subtitles

Oh, rock documentaries, rockumentaries,

I really dislike them.

They get these old farts waffling on,

"The amount of drugs we took on the road,

the amount of women we shagged. It was great, weren't it?"

It's just a long procession of talking heads,

"Oh, I used to be their roadie."

"Oh, I used to live next door to the bass player's cousin."

They always have that lugubrious keyboard player

from that prog rock group.

Oh, yeah, XTC, I remember XTC.

Don't you dare have him in this documentary!

It's always the same faces, it's always the same tales.

It never has a good ending.

They always fall out with each other.

They're always suing each other.

One of them dies, or two of them dies, or they all die

and they all can't stand the sight of each other anymore,

Stop!

"Making Plans For Nigel"

The only thing that's worthy

of making a documentary about XTC

is it's not about the rock and roll bollocks

that constitute 99% of other bands.

We weren't into any of that rock and roll stuff.

We're not rock and roll people.

We made gently, exploratory pop music,

and I actually think we started pretty damn good

and then got a lot better.

And there's not too many bands can say that's their arc.

♪ We're only making plans for Nigel ♪

The journey that they went on is extraordinary

in terms of, you know, musical evolution.

You have to look at a band like The Beatles

to find anyone that's even comparable

in the sense of reinventing themselves over and over again.

"Senses Working Overtime"

♪ And all the world is football-shaped ♪

I thought these guys ascended to...

You know, from great punk roots to a whole other level.

The leap forward they'd made to just gorgeous songwriting

and gorgeous record-making.

♪ Senses working overtime ♪

He's probably one of the most unique songwriters

this country's ever produced.

He's got this thing

of just taking these melodies that soar, you know.

It was kind of mind-blowing.

"Wrapped In Grey"

♪ Awaken, you dreamers ♪

♪ Adrift in your bed ♪

Each song is different to the next,

let alone each album.

It's hard to make one album different to the next,

and they do it from song to song.

And I think that's one of the reasons

why they should be relevant,

because they have never done anything that's expected,

and that's really rare.

"Easter Theatre"

♪ Enter Easter and she's dressed in yellow yolk ♪

One of the things I love about them is that you can sort of...

You can just sort of sit back and enjoy the musicianship

and the beautiful sounds and these melodies.

It's songwriting at its highest level.

♪ Enter Easter and she's dressed in yellow yolk ♪

♪ Now the son has died, the father can be born ♪

♪ If we'd all breathe in and blow away the smoke... ♪

"This Is Pop"

♪ Yeah, yeah, this is pop ♪

♪ Yeah, yeah, this is ♪

♪ Pop! ♪

Well, I never thought I was any good at anything

until I got more and more into drawing and painting.

Comics were a big influence. I loved them,

and I thought, "Do you know, I can draw.

Maybe when I grow up I can be a cartoon artist."

I was a kid that always made my own entertainment.

For me, it went with the territory

of being an only child.

It went with a very, very controlling, OCD mother

who wouldn't allow other kids to come into the house to play.

I could go round other kids' houses,

but for some reason they couldn't come in mine.

This was her, "Oh, I don't want any filth on the floor."

You could go in everyone else's house

and you'd know there were kids living there,

there'd be toys around.

You'd go in our house -

"No, there's no child lives here," you know.

And she would constantly throw my toys away.

It was like the OCD control thing, you know.

It was a constant hurt to have your...

You know, you had no brothers and sisters,

you weren't close to your parents.

The only things you kind of felt any connection with

was your toys, and they were always got rid of.

So I fought this de-childification of the house.

Maybe it's why I love toys so much now.

I'm trying to say,

"You ain't gonna throw them out now," you know.

I was a real Jonny No Mates.

I had to make up games, I would design stuff,

I would always be drawing.

I was always a self-entertainer.

And then I was the right age

that psychedelia kicked in, '66, '67.

Pop music starts getting very colorful,

and right about that time

music starts to loom really heavily in my life.

And suddenly I was just opening up the age of, you know,

your balls start dropping,

the opposite sex stop being embarrassing

and start becoming intensely interesting.

It was all hand-in-hand with... I was just the right age.

Girls are getting bigger, music's getting bigger, kapow.

And it's that thing of,

If I'm gonna get off this council estate,

I don't think I'm gonna do it by being a graphic artist.

I don't wanna have to join the Navy

to see the world like my dad.

What way is it that I can get out of here?

It's gotta be music!

It can't be hard writing songs.

The girls love them all. This is great.

How do you learn to do it? I'm gonna teach myself.

I was struggling.

I was copying as many records as I could,

pulling that stylus back: "How does that bit go?

Oh, no, what's that chord?

I don't know what that chord is, I can't find it."

But I very, very quickly, for all the wrong reasons,

quickly got into writing my own songs.

And it's for the wrong reasons

because I wasn't good enough to learn other people's songs.

So, "Okay, You need to write your own."

And that's how it grew.

It grew, because I couldn't work out other people's stuff.

Andy and I grew up on

the Penhill council estate.

He was the next school year up from me,

but we went to the same school.

He was the guy that used to draw caricatures

of the teachers in the playground,

so he always had a crowd around him.

He was a good draftsman even then.

And then I didn't see him for a couple of years.

I think I met him in a music shop, Kempster's.

And he was the guy

that used to take the expensive guitars off the wall,

much to the proprietor's dismay.

You know, we'd go in and kind of turn on an amplifier

and get a cable that somebody had left from trying a guitar,

and when nobody was looking,

take a guitar off the wall and plug it in, you know.

Then the pair of us would be showing each other

licks and riffs and things.

Hey, you're Andy Partridge.

You write good songs and play the guitar well.

That's right. Who are you, mystery bass man?

I'm Colin Moulding, and this is Terry Chambers.

You must be Terry, the drum player.

Yes, I am. I play the drums.

Hey, let's go to the pub

and talk about being in a group, then.

Let's get pissed first.

By the time we met, when we were about 17,

we still hadn't mastered our instruments.

So, we basically sort of learnt along together,

but I think Andy was a little bit more advanced musically

than what we were.

"Adrenalin"

Well, he was a bolshy bugger even then, you know.

Very confident, obviously very talented,

so we were happy to go along with his ideas, really.

The stuff I wrote for The Helium Kidz

I thought had its own sound, because I was taking my love

of American comics and science fiction,

and I thought, "I'll write songs

about those kind of subjects."

The songs they were playing

were all about two, two and a half minutes long

and no-one locally was doing that.

We were all kind of underground blues bands.

That's really what was going on in the mid-70s,

But this was some kind of...

It was almost like cartoon pop music,

but there was something about it that I hadn't seen

in any other local band.

I didn't seriously imagine they were gonna get anywhere,

because who's gonna take a band from Swindon seriously?

It just wasn't gonna happen.

Swindon has this reputation for being a comedy place,

a backward place,

that anything that comes from it is considered to be a joke.

It's designated "the comedy town"

and everything associated with Swindon

must be stupid and comical and worthless.

Which is terrible when you're trying to...

instigate a band from Swindon.

"They must be terrible and comical and worthless."

"Neon Shuffle"

Locally, he was viewed

as being a bit out there for local tastes, you know.

But we thought he was great,

because he was a larger-than-life character

and he was very funny.

And he was making music that was unusual,

so we were kinda drawn to that.

So the three of us, that was the nucleus of the band,

me, Andy and Terry.

And the fourth member always seemed to be changing.

By the time The Helium Kidz became XTC,

we found a keyboard player by the name of Barry Andrews

and we went out drinking one night and got awfully sick.

So it was like, "Okay, he's one of the gang.

He can hold his beer better than I can, you know,

so he's in."

I had no idea what he played like.

And the first rehearsal we had with him

I thought, "Oh, my God, we've said he's in the band

and I can't stand his playing.

It's like Deep Purple or something," you know.

And I took him to one side halfway through this rehearsal

and I said, "Do you really wanna play like that?

Feel free to play any way you really want to play."

And the second half of the rehearsal

it was, "My God!"

It was like the sound of somebody

repairing a flying saucer engine.

It was just so odd

and it was so many beautiful wrong notes.

"He is so in this group."

♪ When you do it, it ain't no disgrace ♪

We heard that there was a buzz about XTC. "You gotta see XTC."

So we went down there, and sure enough

they were one of the few bands of that era

that dared to break the very strict rules of punk.

XTC actually had complex chords, complex rhythms,

lyrics that were outside that very narrow frame

and it was actually very heartening for us

to see a band just throwing of that strait jacket.

Hello, my name is John Peel.

On tonight's program I'll be playing tracks by The Sloots,

The Slots, The Groan, Exploding Truss,

The Blues Bastards

one from The Geckos, Hubert And His Pile Tones,

The Ear, The Nose, The Throat,

The Cassowaries from Hell are here, and Inevitable Groin

I think Andy sent a tape off to John Peel

and got us on the show.

That was about four months before we were signed to Virgin

and that was our first appearance on the radio.

So, on to tonight's first guests,

and they're XTC. See what you think.

At the time, the music industry was a bit of a closed shop.

There wasn't really any way in. But when punk came along,

it kind of swept everything aside.

And we got in on the punk ticket, I think.

But I think we were more akin to the New York Dolls,

we weren't really punk as such.

We weren't political in any way.

♪ I have a feeling ♪

♪ Something's looking in-in-in-in-in ♪

Why don't we go to London and be famous, kids?

Punk rock is just starting up and they'll swallow anything.

♪ Science friction burns my fingers ♪

The floodgates were opened

after the whole so-called punk new wave scene.

And, you know, as time went on, the labels kind of dropped away

for a band like Blondie or for a band like XTC, you know.

You just really... They were just like a great band.

I mean, their music was innovative,

lyrically interesting and a bit eccentric, I suppose.

And I think as time went on,

they kinda proved that to be true.

By the time XTC got signed up in '77 -

and who didn't get signed up in '77, it was like a disease.

Record companies were so scared of missing the boat,

"Ah, there's this thing called punk, new wave,

whatever it is, we don't know what it's called.

Quick, sign everything!"

They just signed everything.

So they looked at XTC and, "Right, you're signed."

That first record is the one that, to this day,

I love it so much.

And I love the way it's like post-punky

and I really love his guitar playing.

It's like that fast, erratic playing,

and his singing, it's so cool.

♪ Science friction burns my fingers ♪

So the first XTC album

was some of the dregs of the comic stuff,

like Neon Shuffle, Science Friction.

But there were other things as well

that were happening to me at the time, like This Is Pop.

Where people are trying to work out

what this new music is called.

Is it punk

And to me, it was just pop music.

It was short, sharp, slightly futuristic pop music.

I thought, "Come on, you idiots,

don't bother with putting it into yet another sub ghetto.

It's just pop music."

♪ What do you call that noise ♪

♪ That you put on? ♪

♪ This is pop ♪

♪ Yeah, yeah ♪

♪ This is pop ♪

♪ Yeah, yeah ♪

♪ This is pop ♪

♪ Yeah, yeah ♪

♪ This is ♪

His singing voice, of course, on the first record,

it was kinda yelping, really.

He was always trying to, "Urgh,"

trying to get above the row of the instruments, you know.

It was probably the style of the music and the time,

where people thought to sing was to shout.

♪ This is ♪

♪ Yeah, yeah ♪

♪ This is pop ♪

I very quickly realized that I can't find another singer

who's delivering my songs how I want them delivered.

So I'm reluctantly gonna have to sing them,

and I'm not a good singer.

At best, in the early years,

I managed an entertaining seal bark of a noise,

"Arrrhh, arrrhh," you know.

It was like a wounded Lassie or something.

And if Colin writes some songs then he's gonna sing them.

I'm not gonna do his songs.

So it was that kind of unwritten agreement

that you write it, you sing it.

♪ Are you receiving me? ♪

♪ You are deceiving me, I know ♪

I had no ambition to write.

I think it was one of the roadies that said, you know,

"Colin, you ought to write,

because otherwise you'll miss out," you know.

So I made a contribution to the first album.

And then on the second album

Barry said it would be better all-round

if we all made a contribution,

and he started to write songs, as well.

By the time we got to doing the second record, Go 2,

there was Barry's songs that had to be done, you know.

Give him a chance kind of thing.

And, of course, they stuck out, you know.

They weren't really band songs, XTC songs.

Barry and I were sniping at each other terribly

during the recording of that,

'cause I was seeing that he was kind of in danger

of stealing my band away,

or was trying to do that from under my nose.

From suddenly not writing any songs,

he had suddenly written seven songs.

But he was very upset

that he didn't get them all on the album.

But then you can't waltz into a band

and say, "Okay, Mr. Songwriter,

we're not having any of your songs.

Half of the album is gonna be my songs,

which I've just started writing and you have to use them all."

So I thought, "No, let's give it a few albums

and then we can start to introduce your songs."

But no, Barry, being the lone wolf, had to leave.

♪ Are you receiving me? ♪

♪ You are deceiving me ♪

I thought, "Ah, we can't stop our career now.

It's just taking off.

Who do I know that we can get in the band?

I know, maybe the person

we should have had in the first place:

local guitarist Dave Gregory."

A friend of mine and a fantastic guitarist.

And, yeah, I think he liked the opportunity

to come and be in a band that was on its way up.

♪ I have learned there's a magical spot at the hop ♪

♪ Ooh-whoo! ♪

I think he just wanted to find someone

who he could relate to on a personal level,

who'd do what he asked without squabbling too much.

But he certainly broadened my mind as to, you know,

how I should approach...

For example, if he heard

even the slightest hint of a blues cliché

in anything I was doing, he'd just say, "Don't do that!"

So he got me thinking in a completely different way.

On my audition, we were just jamming on something

and I think at one point I went...

..and he went, "Stop! Stop Ernieing"

And I said "What?"

"Stop Ernieing! Don't Ernie. Don't do that."

♪ Ernie, Ernie, Ernie ♪

He hated that, so I had to sort of...

Straight away, that was the last time

I ever played a phrase like that in an XTC song.

♪ Life begins at the hop ♪

♪ Boys and girls ♪

When Barry left, it seemed to trigger something, you know.

The dynamic of the band changed

and I was writing more for myself, you know.

Colin brought this guitar to the rehearsal room and said,

"I've written this song, fellas, and it goes like this."

And he played the three or four chords

that constitute Making Plans For Nigel.

And we liked the melody,

thought the melody was really nice.

♪ Da-da-da-da-da-duh, da-duh-da-duh ♪

You know, it's a very old-fashioned melody.

It could be Gilbert O'Sullivan,

could be, you know, a show tune or something.

♪ We're only making plans for Nigel ♪

♪ We only want what's best for him ♪

But he's strumming it to us on a classic guitar,

and it was, "Oh, my God. We can't do it like that.

He's like Julie Felix or Joan Baez or something.

You know, nobody's...

We're not gonna take that, let alone our audience.

And so we just pulled it totally apart.

I got Terry to play in an upside-down drum rhythm,

where he moved at quite a conventional rhythm

around to other drums.

And if you're a drummer,

try playing that rhythm on Making Plans For Nigel.

It takes some upside-down thinking.

I'm just doing these sort of stabbing chords.

Over the top of that, Andy's got this little...

Colin is copying what is being played on the tom-tom,

which is this tribal thing,

'cause we wanna get into that tribal area

with drums, you know.

So the whole song is this big tribal-sounding behemoth.

And, damn it, it was a hit.

♪ We're only making plans for Nigel ♪

♪ Nigel just needs that helping hand ♪

♪ And if young Nigel says he's happy ♪

♪ He must be happy ♪

♪ He must be happy ♪

♪ He must be happy in his work ♪

I knew by that album,

the album that became Drums And Wires,

that I wanted to take the band in a more drum-heavy direction

And so we found a producer, an engineer,

that I felt would be good for this new sound,

which was Hugh Padgham engineering

and Steve Lillywhite being the producer.

And it was a case of,

"Well, let's get you in a live-sounding studio,

where there's plenty of stone and brick and wood and glass

to reflect the sound."

So we went to the brand-new Virgin Town House,

which had just been built.

The great thing with this room at The Town House

was that it was all sort of stone and bricks,

so when you stand next to somebody playing the drums,

it's loud.

And there had become a phenomenon in the '70s,

where records tended to have a very sort of dead sound

on, well, particularly the drums,

and they often didn't sound very big.

Now, recording them in this big room,

and the technique that I sort of discovered,

made the drums sound loud, even when they were quiet.

That was the drum...

The drum sound of the 1980s.

That everybody now knows was made famous by Phil Collins

and the big drum break in In The Air Tonight.

It was a new sound. It was a new thing.

And people were saying to us, you know,

like we're touring with The Police and,

"Partsy, man, how are you getting that sound

like, with the big drums?

Who's doing your engineering, man?"

"Well, it's a young fella called Hugh Padgham."

"Right, have you got his number?

We'll have a bit of that on The Police."

Hugh Padgham came to us

because of his unbelievable credentials.

He had recorded the albums

that everybody held up as the sound that every band wants.

The combination of the size and clarity,

everybody wanted that sound.

♪ We're only making plans for Nigel ♪

Drums And Wires just changed the game for us.

Reinvented the band.

Easy to tour. Easy to play on stage.

Just put us another notch up the ladder, I guess.

It was a double-edged sword for me,

because certainly in Britain

we'd had no chart success with this odd music.

You know, these strange Herberts

from a council estate in Swindon.

"It's too odd for me. That's punky, ain't it?

That's, well, you know..."

So by the time that Colin came up with Making Plans For Nigel

Virgin Records said, "Hey, that good-looking bass player,

he's come up with one and it's in the charts,

so, okay, he's the one to look at,

and we thought it was Andy's group."

From then on, for quite a few years,

certainly in the eyes of Virgin Records,

it became Colin's group.

I think he was a little bit pissed off, to be honest,

as you can imagine, because, you know,

he had been the song writer, you know, the sole song writer.

He was the face of the band,

so it all felt a little bit odd.

Essentially, I was the bass player,

but, all of a sudden, I was thrust forward.

♪ Generals and Majors, ah-ha ♪

♪ They're never too far ♪

♪ From battlefields so glorious ♪

To be fair, he's the one

who looked most like a pop star.

You know, all his songs were melodic and simple.

They're very easy, easy on the ear, listener-friendly songs.

So the record company would always look to Colin

for the singles first.

So you can understand

why Andy might have had his nose

put out of joint a little bit because of that.

But, you know, he got on with it okay.

He still had the lion's share of the writing,

and he was still in charge.

♪ Generals ♪

♪ And Majors ♪

It was kind of good for him as well,

because it kind of spurred both of us on, you know.

Virgin rule was after the next hit.

So in a way, it was healthy after a while.

I had that thing where I thought it was my band.

You know. And...

But I realized it was our band.

The fact that Colin was writing good songs,

I was writing good songs,

Dave was playing great instrumentation orchestration,

Terry was whacking seven bells out of that kit beautifully,

it all made it stronger.

♪ Towers of London ♪

♪ When they had built you ♪

♪ Did you watch over the men who fell? ♪

Andy was getting a reputation by this time

as being, you know, a songwriter,

as opposed to being, you know, a punk guitar player.

Both guys were writing much better songs.

I think the two of them complimented each other really.

They never actually ever wrote together.

They were never a Lennon and McCartney type of partnership.

They never wrote songs together.

There was his songs, and his songs, and that was it.

♪ Need assisting ♪

Colin had less

of the kind of bite and perversity of Andy.

Andy has this kind of strange world

that he kinda retreats into,

that's kind of a mixture of nostalgia and sexual tension,

and the fact that it's quintessentially English.

♪ If I could only be tough like him ♪

♪ Then I could win my own small battle of the sexes ♪

For me, more and more of the influences

was the British pop group stuff came out more and more,

i.e. The Beatles, Rolling Stones,

The Small Faces, The Kinks.

The way that Ray Davies wrote these little mini plays

about life in England. You know, I loved that.

And I sort of gravitated naturally

towards wanting to do that myself.

You're not stealing, it's just you can't help it.

It's in your DNA.

You live in a little English town.

Just the very fact that you're reporting what's going on

in that little English town,

it's gonna be a bit like anybody else

who wrote about small things in small towns.

♪ Heard the neighbor slam his car door ♪

♪ Don't you realize, this is Respectable Street? ♪

With Respectable Street,

it's this really mundane, supposedly uninteresting story

of this suburban, boring life,

but they paint this really vivid picture of it.

And you can completely see Andy just poking out the curtains,

watching it all go on.

He's such a character, and that comes out in the lyrics,

that comes out in the songs.

♪ Avon lady fills the creases ♪

♪ When she manages to squeeze in past the caravans ♪

♪ That never move from their front gardens ♪

So long as the four of us were together,

we were in this little Swindon bubble,

we were protected, we were among friends.

Some of the weird people we met on the road, you know,

you just think, "Well, at least we can laugh about it."

Because the rock and roll lifestyle is pretty absurd.

Particularly on the road.

But, you know, Andy, he never stopped.

He was always joking and larking around,

keeping us happy.

It was just his personality.

It wasn't something he felt he had to do,

he's just a natural, comical person.

Humor is an important part of every band's life,

and we got on great with XTC.

Andy was much more comfortable

the further he was away from the show.

After the show, Andy is a hoot.

We actually shared a tour bus with them,

which is two bands on a bus,

which is pretty darn neighborly.

But we got along really well.

You know, XTC and The Police

were two similar bands of the same age,

and we just, you know, we were in the pocket.

♪ Bang the wall for me to turn, turn, turn ♪

I think we were generally pretty good live.

Being tight as a band was important.

But I kinda quickly found out

that I didn't enjoy the business of live so much.

For the travel, the sound checks,

all the assholes you have to deal with

in agencies and managers.

So I hated all that side of it

I mean, actually being on stage was the nicest bit of the day.

♪ ..he realize, this is Respectable Street? ♪

After we'd finished touring Black Sea,

which was most of 19...

the second half of 1980,

we were all ready to do something new.

It was time to sort of expand

the two guitars, bass and drums line-up.

Maybe add some piano here and there

and just think about, maybe, different guitar textures.

So we went in and rehearsed songs

for the album that would become English Settlement.

Virgin are telling us, "Yeah, nice material, lads,

you don't have a single."

And so I sat down and tried to write a single.

"Let me see. What's good?

What do people want? Like, nursery rhymes.

Yeah, it's gotta be a kind of simple melody.

Counting's always good."

That's...

♪ Five, four, three, two, one ♪

♪ Da-da-da, da-da-da ♪

♪ Five, four, three, two, one ♪

"Yeah that was a big hit. Yeah, I can do counting.

Well, flip it the other way. One, two, three, four, five.

What's about that? What have we got five of?

Five legs? No, we don't have five legs.

Five arms

No, it's four fingers and a thumb.

Five senses. Okay.

So it's gonna be about your senses. Right.

We got where... So it's a counting song.

I'm counting, "One, two, three, four, five."

And it's gonna be stamp, stamp. You're gonna get this."

♪ One, two, three, four, five ♪

"Great, that's all working. I don't have a verse."

And so I was thinking, "Okay, maybe the verse...

Maybe the verse should be an E as well."

And I threw my hands on the guitar,

but instead of throwing them...

..there... That's a nice E.

..I threw them on kind of an E-flat place

And I didn't throw all my fingers on.

I just threw two of them on. I wasn't thinking.

And I ended up with that.

And I thought, "Ah, what's that?

That's an interesting chord, non-chord."

I thought, "Wow. I wonder what that's like

if I move my fingers and go the other way as well?"

"Ooh, that's very nice. This sounds medieval.

This is like somebody in a field, tilling.

This is a little fella and his ox and he's tilling a field."

You know.

And so I started to sing

with the nursery rhyme thing in mind.

I thought,

"Well, what would this person tilling the fields be...

He'd be singing,

♪ Hey, hey, the clouds are whey ♪

Yeah, I like that.

I'm liking that he's looking up at the clouds, you know."

And so the whole verse

was made out of this kind of medieval...

Bloody evil!

..this medieval thing, which I then jammed on.

"I'm gonna make this work."

I then jammed on to the other bits.

♪ Hey, hey, the clouds are whey ♪

♪ The straw for the donkeys ♪

♪ And the innocents can all sleep safely ♪

♪ All sleep safely ♪

♪ My, my, sun is pie ♪

♪ There's fodder for the cannons ♪

♪ And the guilty ones can all sleep safely ♪

♪ All sleep safely ♪

♪ And all the world is football-shaped ♪

♪ It's just for me to kick in space ♪

♪ And I can see, hear, smell, touch, taste ♪

♪ And I've got one, two, three, four, five ♪

♪ Senses working overtime ♪

♪ Trying to take this all in ♪

♪ I've got one, two, three, four, five ♪

♪ Senses working overtime ♪

♪ Trying to taste the difference ♪

♪ 'Tween a lemon and a lime ♪

♪ Pain and pleasure ♪

♪ And the church bells softly chime ♪

Halfway through an American tour,

the woman I was married to at the time

looked at a big tub of Valium I had.

And when I finished a gig one night

and went out drinking with some people in Los Angeles,

she thought to herself, "What's he taking this shit for?

He doesn't need it. It doesn't do anything for him

I'm gonna get rid of him. We're..."

Ooh, Freudian slip! "I'm gonna get rid of it."

She tipped all these Valium down the toilet.

I came home drunk

to this grotty hotel room in Los Angeles.

So I'm going in, I'm gonna to need my Valium.

"Where's my Valium?"

She said, "I've tipped it all away,

I don't want you taking this crap anymore.

You've gotta stop this stuff."

I freaked out. I thought, "Ah, that's my crutch!

What are you doing? I take that every day of my life.

I've taken that every day since I was 12, 13,"

which I had done.

I was on it in the first place

because my mother had a lot of mental problems,

and the fallout from that was really fucking me up as a kid.

Big time.

And it was the '60s.

And the new wonder drug, Valium!

"Yeah. Oh, his mother's crazy.

We're putting her in a loony bin for a while.

Poor kid's upset. He's only 12.

Tell you what, stick him on Valium."

I was on Valium, addicted to this stuff since then,

and here I am 13 years later, not registering I'm addicted

and thinking I can just stop.

I had no idea how Valium addiction gets you,

and I had no concept of getting off of it.

No concept of cold turkey.

No concept of,

"This is gonna destroy you if you do it like this."

So, like two naive idiots, she tipped it all away,

and I said, "Okay.

It doesn't do anything for me in any case.

Doesn't give me a high, doesn't do anything.

What does it do? Nothing.

Great. I'm fine. I'm now off of Valium."

Oh, what a fool. What a pair of fools, you know.

Over the following year, I went into slow brain melt.

I developed panic attacks. I had no idea what they were.

Memory loss. My limbs were seizing up.

This was... My whole world was going wrong

because of this Valium addiction,

coming off of Valium, stopping dead.

I didn't think to go to talk to specialists

and say, "How do you do this?"

Since, people have said,

"Hey, you come off of 13 years of Valium addiction,

it's worse than heroin,

and you try doing cold turkey on heroin."

I knew he was having these night terrors.

I knew that he was very, very nervous.

Before every show in the dressing room, you know,

he would be so tense, and you'd just think,

"Well, if that's what it takes to get him on stage,

then that's what he has to do."

But you never imagine that it's anything seriously amiss,

other than just the natural, you know,

tension of stage nerves.

We would get to just before the gig

and he'd have feelings of being sick and all the rest of it,

you know, "No, I can't go on. I feel sick."

But it was just... It was just nerves, you know,

which manifested itself in a physical, you know,

psychosomatic way.

Just things came unwound.

I was getting agoraphobia, I couldn't go out.

I was getting panic attacks.

No concept of what panic attack was.

And I'm on stage and I'm getting a panic attack.

"Ah! Ah! Why?

Why am I afraid of everything in the known universe?"

You know?

No concept of what was happening to me.

And I found myself going on tour, touring around Europe

and then it was a tour of The States,

then it would have been Japan, Australia,

blah-blah-blah, wherever.

Doing this with my brain dribbling out of my skull.

All these things going wrong in my mind and in my life,

and me not knowing what they are.

And I found myself onstage in Paris

having the mother of all panic attacks

and thinking, "That's it. I'm going mad.

I've got to stop the world. I wanna get off." You know.

I'm getting all emotional saying this.

Yeah...

Yeah.

"It's Nearly Africa"

We knew he was unhappy on that particular tour,

and when he walked off, immediately we just thought,

"Well, this is Andy being petulant

and just doing this to make a point."

Even when that happened,

and I regret this, you know, looking back at it now,

we should have paid more attention

to what he was... how he was feeling.

We just figured, "Well, let's get him home.

Rest for a month.

And then we'll go back out when he's all better."

We'd had this tour set up in America,

and we had to get out of town fast,

because once the promoters knew

that we weren't going to play, you know,

they were saying, "We want a doctor to come round."

And I remember Andy and I were just packed on a plane,

and we shot back to England.

But financially, we lost hand over fist, you know,

because we weren't sued

but we had to pay a good deal of money over

in order to pacify the promoters, you know.

I probably reacted a bit unsympathetically towards him,

I suppose. I was the youngest fella there,

and, jeez, you know, to pull out of an American tour

is pretty...pretty big stuff.

And, yeah, I wasn't aware of...

..like it was like an illness.

Like, you know, I wasn't aware of that.

I just thought, you know,

"He's just going through a bit of a bad patch

and he'll get over it."

My brother Ian was our agent and their agent,

and the first I learned of the stage fright issue

was my brother Ian freaking out,

saying, "I can't believe it.

We have the best tour. They're starting their tour."

I think it...

Madison Square Garden or something.

It was just the tour.

"Boys, you've worked hard.

This is your payoff. You've landed."

And then a phone call from England

is that Andy just can't.

Won't.

The sad bit is

I think that he went from not being able to do it

to not wanting...

Well, that was his story, that he said he didn't want to.

I mean, Andy being one for not allowing anything

to kind of say he can't do,

I think he turned it round a bit,

to say, "Well, I don't want to do."

But maybe if he'd have got counselling for it,

it may have changed things, you know.

♪ I put on a fake smile ♪

♪ And start the evening show ♪

♪ The public is laughing ♪

♪ I guess by now they know ♪

I was just at the end of my tether with everything.

I was at the end of my tether

with being a performing monkey for management.

I was sick of not seeing any money for all of this.

In all those years of touring, the band never saw a penny.

I know who the villain in all this.

I'm not gonna get into all that,

'cause it's too rockumentary.

But I know who the villains are.

But we never saw any money, and I was sick of that.

We never saw any time off to be normal, I was sick of that.

Sick of hotels. The whole thing.

I was trapped, and I wanted off that treadmill.

♪ Dear Madam Barnum ♪

♪ I resign as clown ♪

♪ Dear Madam Barnum ♪

♪ I resign as clown ♪

♪ Dear Madam Barnum ♪

I just wanted a normal life.

I thought, "No, I need to get away from this touring crap.

If my music's gonna get better, and therefore XTC's music,

we need better-quality songs

and I need more time to write more and better-quality songs."

Virgin took it so badly.

So badly.

Everybody did.

You know, the manager. I think the band did, as well.

They thought, "Oh, that's the end of us," you know.

It got very frustrating for me and for Terry,

because we...

Well, Terry just loves the road, he loves performing.

He loves playing his drums.

And me, too.

I don't really understand why a musician wouldn't want to work.

You know, wouldn't want to go out and tour and play.

He never really wanted to pursue the live thing again,

you know, which really went against

everything I sort of stood for, really.

I mean, if you're a musician, to me,

playing is what it's all about.

Besides that, my sort of circumstances

had changed, as well.

And my wife was Australian, and we had a small child.

So that, on top of the

non-touring situation, I thought,

"Well, jeez, you know, maybe it's time for me to move out."

I totally and utterly felt freed up

from stopping live.

It was like "Hey, let's get in the studio

and use it for what it is, this creative tool.

Let's use every tool in the studio box.

We want some brass, we hire a brass player.

We want this organ, we just get this organ in.

We want Mellotron, let's get a Mellotron.

We wanna overdub this, change the speed of that, let's...

We can do anything we want, for God's sake.

Why were we restricting ourselves

to two colors on the palette just so we could do it live?

That's insane, fellas. That's not how you grow."

The arrangements of the songs became more complex.

We were able to use strings and stuff

without fear of trying to reproduce it on stage.

We didn't have that problem.

We could go to town, really, you know, and we did.

For me, it was wonderful.

It was like the blinkers came off.

That's live.

That's...

"Wow! There are all those other colors! I wanna use them."

♪ Awaken, you dreamers ♪

♪ Adrift in your beds ♪

♪ Balloons and streamers ♪

♪ Decorate the ♪

♪ Inside of your heads ♪

♪ Please let some out ♪

♪ Do it today ♪

♪ But don't let the loveless ones ♪

♪ Sell you a world wrapped in gray ♪

♪ Da, da ♪

♪ Da, da, hm ♪

How I wrote a lot of the songs is I'll find a chord

or a chord change on a guitar, or on a keyboard,

and I'm playing those, but I'm not hearing music.

I'm seeing pictures. That's how I write songs.

It comes, usually, from the synesthesic level.

Synesthesia is where you get stuff mixed up.

Someone will say a number and you'll hear a noise.

Or someone will show you a color

and you'll think of a number.

Or you'll hear a piece of music or a chord,

and, to me, it makes a picture.

I'm gonna just see if I can do the exercise live, as it were.

Let me find a chord that I've never played in my life.

Let me see.

No, that's a bit rotten.

Ooh.

You see, that, to me, suggests a pool of...

Like a puddle. Like a pool of muddy water.

[continues to play guitar chords]

So if was working from the synesthesia point,

the song would have to be involving this muddy water

in some way.

I've never done this before in my life.

Okay, so it's...

Not this song,

or what I'm about to sing or anything, or say,

or the words or anything, but...

♪ There is the muddiest of water ♪

♪ There is the deepest of pools ♪

So, to me, it suggests...

That's a lovely chord, actually.

I'm not gonna forget that. But that's...

I have no idea what that chord is called,

I've never played it before, but it suggests muddy water.

That's how I write songs.

It comes usually from the synesthesic thing.

"Love On A Farmboy's Wages"

I wrote this song, Love On A Farmboy's Wages,

sort of about the romance of my grandfather,

and, to some extent, my father working on farms.

I mean, they had terrible lives on these farms.

I was just messing around with a note of E and...

"Oh, yeah. That's nice. That's like the countryside.

You know, we're on the farm."

♪ Tonight, when my work is done ♪

It's so important

that you paint the musical scenery, to me.

Then you can find the right lines for the actors to say.

But if you don't get the correct scenery,

you can't stage this.

But it's a very personal song for me, because it,

certainly to me, it references my grandfather and my father.

♪ Shilling for the fellow who brings the sheep in ♪

♪ Shilling for the fellow who milks the herd ♪

♪ Shilling for the fellow with a wife for keeping ♪

♪ How can we feed love on a farmboy's wages? ♪

Somebody said, "You've gotta hear this song,

Love On A Farmboy's Wages."

And I just thought, as good as XTC had been up till then,

it was like a revelation of the leap forward they had made,

you know, out of their punk roots into, you know,

just gorgeous songwriting and gorgeous record making.

And from then on, I was just a total fan.

♪ Shilling for the fellow with a wife for keeping ♪

♪ How can we feed love on a farmboy's ♪

♪ Love on a farmboy's ♪

♪ Love on a farmboy's wages? ♪

By that time, the hits had dried up,

and I think we did a couple of albums

that weren't particularly successful.

And the scene was changing, so we were...

It was kind of the wilderness years for us, you know,

just for two or three years.

There's a long tradition of whatever media you're in,

writers do it all the time, but musicians do it, as well,

where you wanna not be you.

To go to like a costume ball as some other character,

a masked ball.

Wouldn't that be great fun?

So in our case, "Let's make an album by a different band."

♪ I'm the mole from the ministry ♪

♪ And you'll all bow down to me ♪

♪ I'm the mole in your potting shed ♪

♪ I'm the bad thoughts inside your head ♪

So in two weeks we wrote, recorded and mixed

the Dukes Of Stratosphear's first record.

It was so much fun, I'll tell you.

So much fun not having to be yourself.

♪ 25 o'clock ♪

We had more fun in those two weeks, I think,

than I'd ever had in a studio with anybody.

We just put ourselves in the mind-set

of bands from the mid-'60s,

and just find as much vintage gear as we can,

so we can get it sounding as authentic as possible.

It was very relaxing for the band,

because there was no pressure on them to be here.

There was no pressure to do a hit single.

And it was all their fantasies in making music,

to be psychedelic.

♪ ..thirty-four ♪

It was very good fun, and it did surprisingly well.

The Dukes probably sold more than The Big Express ,

which was the XTC album of around that time.

Of course, it was all meant to be hush, hush,

"Don't tell anyone it's XTC."

Everyone loved it. And people still do today, you know.

When I met The Stone Roses

and they asked me to do their record, they kind of said,

"You are the John Leckie

that did the Dukes Of Stratosphear, aren't you?"

And I went, "Yeah, yeah."

And they said, "Oh, 'cause that's why we asked you.

We loved that record."

Dukes of Stratosphear

was probably a direct predecessor to Britpop.

Creating that sort of psychedelic

'60s-influenced music

was, yeah, very unusual for the time.

I think that album came out in the early-'80s or something,

so that record was, yeah,

definitely a precursor to Britpop, for sure.

It opened us up to a new audience.

It was a lot of kids that were sort of starting to get into...

Well, they were calling it, like, a Paisley Underground,

or, you know, whatever.

It was this new feeling of, "Hey,

maybe '60s music is okay."

And I think it gave us the feeling

that we could tap into what we liked as schoolkids.

I think we all felt more comfortable in ourselves,

and we felt more comfortable

in being this bridge from the '60s to the '80s.

And hey, that's fine, you know. This is why...

We were then at that point where it was like,

"We're not gonna deny any of our influences anymore,

we're just gonna let them all free."

♪ Season cycle moving round and round ♪

♪ Pushing life up from a cold, dead ground ♪

♪ It's growing green ♪

♪ It's growing green ♪

♪ Well, darling, don't you ever stop to wonder ♪

♪ About the clouds, about the hail and thunder? ♪

♪ About the baby and its umbilical? ♪

♪ Who's pushing the pedals on the season cycle? ♪

By the time we had got to making the Skylarking album

which I think personally is the next Dukes record,

Virgin really wanted us to break big in The States

and did actually say,

"If you don't let an American produce your next album-to-be,

you're off the label,

because you are not selling enough records in America."

And they said, "You're gonna need a US producer,

somebody who knows what Americans like

and can find that in your music."

'Cause I thought our music was pretty British.

"Okay, good luck."

And they sent me a list of all these producers.

You know, Arnie Dinkelberger IX,

and Ronnie Dangleheimer XIV, and all that.

I didn't know who all these people were.

I'd never heard of them.

So right near the bottom of this list was Todd Rundgren.

I thought, "Ah! I know who he is.

I had an album of his one time.

He's American. Yeah. Right, oh, okay.

So he produces, does he?

Alright, well, that might be fun.

He's a musician. He knows what musicians are about."

And I said to Dave, "You know Todd Rundgren, right?"

"Todd? Yeah, I'm a big fan. Of course I am."

"Well, how would you think if he produced an album?"

"Yeah, let's go for it."

I was in my element. I couldn't believe it.

Just being flown from Swindon

over to the wilds of New York State.

Up in the Catskill Mountains there, surrounded by nature,

working with a legend.

That's the dream, you know.

How much better do you want it to get?

♪ That's really super, Supergirl ♪

♪ How you saved yourself in seconds flat ♪

♪ And your friends, they're gonna say ♪

He was a fantastic arranger. Fantastic.

His arranging skills are really top notch.

Which we needed, I think.

But he and I just butted heads terribly.

♪ Don't mean to be rude ♪

♪ But I don't feel super ♪

I think on this album he really met his nemesis,

because here was someone who was as sarcastic as he was,

probably even more so.

And Andy likes his pound of flesh

when you're recording with him.

If you haven't done six or seven takes,

and he's wrung everything out of you,

then he's not had a good time, you know.

Whereas Todd likes first or second take,

otherwise forget it, you know.

It was just two different philosophies had met.

I have a problem with authority.

"And this is my band and you're not telling us what to do."

But all the time this ghost voice saying,

"If you don't be produced by an American,

you're off the label."

So I just had to bear it as much as possible.

I would have liked Andy and Todd

to have seen eye-to-eye and got along as friends,

but, you know, you've got the irresistible force

and the immovable object.

That's really what the problem was.

But Todd did the job he was given, you know:

he produced a record.

It was a hit record. It saved our career.

No question about it.

♪ Laying on the grass ♪

♪ My heart, it flares like fire ♪

♪ The way you slap my face ♪

♪ Just fills me with desire ♪

In The States, they put the single out, Grass,

which is a Colin song,

then on the B-side they stuck Dear God.

DJs around American radio stations, they'd play Grass,

"Yeah, okay," and then they'd flip over.

"Oh, Dear God, what's this about?"

And some DJs started playing, in preference to Grass,

they started playing Dear God.

♪ Dear God, hope you got the letter ♪

♪ And I pray you can make it better down here ♪

♪ I don't mean a big reduction in the price of beer ♪

♪ But all the people that you made in your image ♪

♪ See them starving on their feet ♪

♪ 'Cause they don't get enough to eat ♪

♪ From God ♪

♪ Can't believe in you ♪

♪ Dear God, sorry to disturb you ♪

♪ But I feel that I should be loud and clear ♪

♪ We all need a big reduction in the amount of tears ♪

♪ And all the people that you made in your image ♪

♪ See them fighting in the street ♪

♪ 'Cause they can't make opinions meet about God ♪

♪ I can't believe in you ♪

It was the old corny,

"Our radio station's lit up like a Christmas tree!"

You know, "The calls in have just been phenomenal!"

People would ring in, inevitably,

with either they felt exactly like that about religion,

"This is all bullshit,"

or, you know, "You're gonna burn in hell.

Take this trash out of here,

this English homo and his anti-God music," you know.

Some stations were threatened with bombing

and stopped playing it.

Some kid in an American school was so affected by it,

he took his teacher hostage with a knife

and insisted this record be played

over the school PA system to all the classrooms continuously

until this hostage situation ended.

Because this record said...

It spoke for what he wanted to say.

And I got a hell of a lot of hate mail for that.

I was gonna burn in hell,

And I was just a god-dang limey faggot.

Well, it's ironic that that song broke them through.

Any record company worth its salt,

which none of them are, by the way, would have said,

"Well, you know, that's great for England,

but don't try that in The States.

We're a God-fearing country.

So it was remarkable.

It got banned some places.

Which I guess helped them! As it always does.

But, yeah, there didn't seem to be anything

he wouldn't write about.

♪ I won't be in believe in heaven in hell ♪

♪ No saints, no sinners, no devil as well ♪

Their Englishness probably made them

a bit exotic to the American market

and to American audiences.

And there's plenty of Anglophiles

in the United States,

so maybe their Englishness worked in their favor.

It became a student hit, I think,

on the campuses and stuff,

and radio stations, you know, across America.

So, yeah, it saved our career, basically.

So, suddenly our career in America really took off,

but it was all accidental.

It was because the B-side pissed people off royally.

♪ It's you-u-u-u-u-u ♪

♪ Dear God ♪

By the time we get to doing Oranges And Lemons,

they're all saying, "Wow, where's the next XTC thing?

"This is really exciting.

That record, Dear God, was really...

"We really want the next thing," you know.

And Geffen, our label in the States, are now reluctantly,

"Ooh, they're selling records. They might be good after all."

So we had a big budget shoved our way.

And it was a very LA kind of...

Not an LA album musically, so much,

but an LA album in kind of sunshine and citrus fruits.

And it plugged me straight into the sort of pop art vibe.

We were working in Hollywood.

It's a big Hollywood production.

And it sounds that way.

It's got bells, it's got whistles.

And we had plenty of time, you know.

Again, you see, five months in a studio,

there's an awful lot you can do.

We probably did a little too much

on one or two of the songs, but again, it's a great album.

A really great collection of songs.

And I can say that as a non-song-writer,

I can say that in all modesty,

'cause I had nothing to do with the actual writing process.

Quite a lot to do with the arrangements and the overdubs.

But to come up with that many good songs,

how many bands can you think of that had that ability?

♪ Well, the way that we're living ♪

♪ Is all take and no give ♪

♪ There's nothing to believe in ♪

♪ The loudest mouth will hail the new-found way ♪

♪ To be king for a day ♪

I just think we learnt how to make records.

We didn't know all about that when we started.

And because we didn't tour,

we found out more about what the studio could do.

And how to arrange.

And it was just learning, really.

It's bound to change, you know

♪ That wave ♪

♪ Pulled me right overboard ♪

♪ Into permanent orgasm ♪

♪ Emotional action... ♪

That was one of our favorite songs.

It's so complex, completely overflowing with ideas.

It's wave-like. It pushes and pulls you in.

And I think we thought

that would be a challenge for us to cover it.

The lyrics are beautiful.

The way the vocal rises and falls,

and we felt we had a deeper take on a cover

than most people usually give a cover.

♪ I was in heaven ♪

♪ Address, Cloud 11 ♪

We wanted to pay our respects to, one, that album,

but also that song,

because that song was buried in, I mean,

among other really great songs.

Hang on, The Cure's version.

♪ That wave ♪

♪ Pulled me into your hair ♪

♪ I'm so unhappy, I think I'm going to kill myself ♪

He likes to play the jokester, and does it very, very well.

His grasp of accents is pretty damn good.

The Smiths' version.

♪ That wa-a-ave ♪

♪ That wa-a-ave ♪

♪ That wave pulled me into your h-h-hair ♪

♪ H-h-h-hair ♪

That's his two notes.

♪ That wave ♪

♪ Pulled me out of your hair ♪

♪ Where I bathed in the promises ♪

♪ Busy with plants cascading ♪

That was always going on in the studio.

That was part of studio banter.

Again, you can't shut him up, Andy, once he's on a roll,

just being idiotic and silly

and, you know, he never stops, Andy.

He never stops entertaining.

Right, then, I'm gonna try and look like Bryan Adams.

As much as possible.

Try and look like Robin Hood.

- Gomez Addams!

And...

One, two, a'one, two, three...

♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh ♪

Well, it's no doubt who's in charge. Andy's editor-in-chief.

But, I mean, what the other guys...

What Colin, obviously, with his songs,

and what Dave...

Dave's musicianship is ridiculous, it's stellar.

♪ The disappointed ♪

But it's the songs,

that was why I was there.

Combination of the quality of the songs,

and they were obviously cool people.

♪ The ones who broke their he-a-a-arts ♪

♪ The disappointed ♪

I would say that Nonsuch

is my favorite XTC album.

That album is just lousy with masterpieces.

"The Ballad Of Peter Pumpkinhead"

But then every time I heard a new album, I was just like,

"Really Where is this coming from?"

♪ Let's begin ♪

Their catalog's really small, actually.

There's not that many albums,

and the journey they go through

with that small number... is amazing.

♪ Peter Pumpkinhead came to town ♪

It's hard to push yourself

and put yourself out of a comfort zone,

but he does that on a regular basis.

And I think that's why he's produced

such a catalog of fantastic work.

♪ But he made too many enemies ♪

He can create great imagery and a great story.

He's such an amazing songwriter

that you can't really touch him, to be honest.

♪ Hooray for Peter Pumpkin ♪

♪ Hooray for Peter Pumpkinhead ♪

For me personally,

Apple Venus, I think, is our best effort.

It's just a real shame

that Dave Gregory didn't stick around for the end of that.

He left during the making of that, and it's...

It is bad when you have a limb detach itself.

You know, when Barry left, it's like,

"Ah, there goes a leg," and then you get another leg

and it works ruddy damn good, yeah!

It works really good!

"This is even better than the first leg, thanks!"

And then, you know, Terry leaves "Ah!"

So we use session drummers,

but some of those session drummers

were certainly different than Terry,

so that was an added bonus to that.

Then Dave left,

and I don't know if we ever recovered from that.

But, you know, for a band, we had a hell of a long life,

and most bands get five years if they're lucky.

We had 30-odd years.

The legacy of the band

is the great music that they made.

You know, they evolved as musicians and as composers,

and sure, from their beginnings

to how they wound up at the end,

there was a strong evolution of a great band.

I love the fact

that they were kind of willfully unpredictable,

but commercially,

that's something that actually is suicidal.

You know, how can you market a band

where it's very hard

to get handle on what kind of band they are?

And I think that's always been

one of the problems they've had.

But to me, it just made me love them even more.

They have got a reputation

as not being well-known

or credited as much as they should.

But I think that XTC fans would be annoyed

if they were more well-known,

because it's our little secret, I think, with that band,

and I kinda like that.

♪ Please to bend down for the one called the Greenman ♪

To me, people who know what they're talking about

already do regard them as up there with the greats.

I mean, look, we're living in a time

when there's a certain percentage of the population

that thinks Kanye West is a genius.

I can't control for that.

But I think the combination of the songwriting, playing

and the record-making is well-nigh perfect.

♪ I'm stupidly happy ♪

Andy used to get his hair off something terrible

when we weren't appreciated

more than what we should've been in his head,

but I think it's coming.

I think, you know, it's partly why we're doing this,

because, you know, the word is out, I think.

You know, it's taken a bloody long time,

but I think people are catching up,

and they're appreciating what we did, you know.

But it took an awful bloody long time.

♪ I'm stupidly happy ♪

♪ Like the words to that song ♪

Most bands, "Great!" Might get a little bit better,

and then they go off the boil.

Or, "Great," and then they go off the boil.

Occasionally, once in a while,

once in a very rare while,

you get a band that starts pretty good,

gets better and better and better and better and...

And that's rare, and I think, and I have to say,

I have to be immodest,

we are the other band that did that.

"Rook"

♪ Rook, rook, read from your book ♪

♪ Who murders who? ♪

♪ "And where is the treasure?" he'd crow ♪

When I'm dreaming,

I'm usually flying over the Marlborough Downs.

I've got this this funny thing when, if I dream I'm flying,

I usually have people there and they say "You can't, can you?"

And I say, "Yeah, watch!"

And I sort of strain a bit,

and up I go and off I go over the Marlborough Downs.

I'm immensely proud of XTC,

and the other band members...

People still say to me,

''What do you think to Colin of Dave and Terry or whatever'?"

And part of me loves them like the brothers I never had,

the family I never had.

And then a part of me really hates them

like the family I did have!

So it's a real weird mixture!

"Mayor Of Simpleton"

There is nothing, or there was nothing like XTC.

It's a totally individual thing, it's not one person,

it's the collective tension of all those people,

and so the fact that we found each other

and made this magical joy-bringing vehicle,

that's not supposed to happen, is it?

And we did -

we made this phenomenal joy-bringing carriage

for all the world to ride around in.

"Hey, have some fun, get in!"

♪ And I may be the Mayor of Simpleton ♪

♪ But I know one thing ♪

♪ And that's I love you ♪

♪ When their logic grows cold ♪

♪ And all thinking gets done ♪

♪ You'll be warm in the arms of the Mayor of Simpleton ♪

Well, this is the bit I really hate about rockumentaries,

where they have the two minutes at the end

where they say...

It's usually a write-up, and they say,

''And poor Derek, he's still working in the industry

and he's self-financed an album he's put out from home

of songs he never did finish in 1966."

And it's like, "Oh, God," you know,

"the misery of all this."

♪ Well, I don't know how to write a big hit song ♪

The whole rockumentary thing

bores the very buttocks off of me,

so that's the end of that, then!

♪ But I know one thing ♪

♪ And that's I love you ♪

♪ I love you ♪

♪ When their logic grows cold ♪

♪ And all thinking gets done ♪

♪ You'll be warm in the arms ♪

♪ Of the Mayor of Simpleton ♪

♪ You'll be warm in the arms ♪

♪ Of the Mayor... ♪

♪ Climb aboard ♪

♪ Climb aboard, you children ♪

♪ Move aloft ♪

♪ While you're fleet and fast ♪

♪ Drop us all ♪

♪ You should drop us all ♪

♪ Drop us all ♪

♪ Like so much ♪

♪ Sa-a-a-a-a-nd ♪