00:00Good morning Peter. Good morning up and coming Glasgow musician Peter. There you
00:08go it's incredible at 66 it's all happening. Sweet Illusions second album
00:14is coming out next month and yeah you know there was going to be a second
00:19album when you started work on the first is did you think this was going to go
00:23somewhere? I think it became clear that I enjoyed doing it so that I sort of
00:32couldn't stop doing it I just kept at it because it was so enjoyable but there was
00:38no plan you know it was it just ended up with more songs and it was so much fun
00:43but it's so much fun putting together an album because it's not like the old days
00:47where you have to be signed up to a big record company and you have to have you
00:51know people on your back all the time and get lots of money anybody can do it
00:56you know and that's it's the doors are opened to access all that creativity
01:01whether it be you know the music and doing the sleeve and all that kind of
01:05stuff so it's fun and I didn't have a big plan no I didn't. I got the sense that it
01:11started off out of there was almost a social aspect of it because you were
01:18recording with people who you know that you got on well with you you enjoyed that
01:22the experience of collaborating with the musicians in the band you bounced their
01:26off ideas but you didn't necessarily arrive with like a whole kind of like
01:30plastic bag full of songs or anything to get together or anything like that?
01:35No I mean this this second album was a wee bit I guess it was a wee bit less random than
01:42the first one the first one was really just having a go just really I hadn't done it for years and
01:46never read never read done it seriously although I'd been in a band and stuff before
01:51and obviously I'd subsequently in my life met musicians who are respected and liked being
01:58around and so the first one was just really having a stab as is the second one really but
02:04you just learn more as you go along and it's and I try to make it a bit more I try to make
02:10the songs a wee bit more complete this time around.
02:13So your vocals are obviously on this and did you play guitar as well?
02:17Was there other elements?
02:18Yeah yeah I played a lot of guitar yeah but it's essentially me and Dr. Robber you know who plays the bass and plays a lot of acoustic and electric guitar and Steve Seidelneck who's a fantastic drummer and processor,
02:29of drum sounds and who did all the drums sounds and who did all the drums and it's amazing.
02:45It sounds a bit more it sounds a bit more filled out and complete this one than the first album.
02:52Yeah the first one yeah it's all just a stab in the dark you know it's all just a experiment and seeing what you can do I mean we had originally with the first one we were going to go into the studio with a band that we put together but then Covid struck and we weren't able to do that so
03:15we were forced then to we still wanted to do it so what we did was we just took all the demos that I'd made on like GarageBand and all that and began to you can send them back and forth on the internet and somebody you know Mick Talbot would add the keyboards or something to it or come back it'd be great and I thought well this is fabulous you know I can just pass things around
03:37and they come back and they come back and they come back and they come back and they come back much better than you than you than they would be if you'd just done it yourself and obviously Robert's got a great address book you know so we were able to get a lot of good people and he himself is a very very skilled musician so but this one was much more just just us you know.
03:58You said both albums are rooted in a version of Glasgow I thought that was quite fun because you know I've talked to I've talked to other musicians who you know the Glasgow that they base their songs on or their characters are it isn't necessarily the one that they inhabit if you know what I mean there's a kind of version of it that either takes on an American quality or a noirish quality and stuff like that.
04:24Yeah.
04:25In your mind's eye did you have a particular version of Glasgow that some of your characters were emerging from?
04:31Yeah because really what I was doing was picking up where I left off 40 years ago when I was an art student in a band and you know when Simple Minds and all that were knocking about and Strawberry Switch played and also the images and all that in Glasgow was a big kind of happening place.
04:50So I was just it's that kind of range but I mean it is quite cinematic that even then I mean the concept of Glasgow was always quite cinematic and quite dramatic it kind of suited to that so I'm unashamedly nostalgic you know for that period and I think a lot of the songs and the sounds of the songs would fit into that period quite well.
05:16I talked to PJ Moore from the Blue Nile and he talked about that period in the 80s and Bobby from the Bluebells has talked about it as well about that there was all kinds of folk arriving up in Glasgow trying to find the next best sound and stuff like that.
05:34Do you think there was a version of things where you could have been sitting in Nico's having a Brandy Alexander and you could have actually signed a record contact at that stage?
05:41Well me personally?
05:44Yeah because like I mean there was people who were like barmen there was people like waitresses there were people who were like artists and stuff like that and then next week they were on top of the pops Peter so you could have been in the right place at the right time as well.
05:55Well obviously weren't they in the right place at the right time and it wasn't for want of trying that never really worked out for us but you know we would have loved something like that to happen and yes of course that's what very much what the vibe was
06:12on the scene really was people would be knocking about Great Western Roads dressed as you know as baby goths and then the next week they'd be signed and then the next month they'd be on top of the pops or whatever.
06:25So it seemed quite possible for all these things to happen but sadly it didn't happen to us.
06:30Why do you think kids had that confidence at that time I asked Jim Kerr you know like his first interview he was a wee guy from Tory Glen his first interview he said he wanted to be the biggest band in the world where do you think that kind of bravado came from from people of that generation?
06:45I don't know I mean Glasgow's a very I think it's a very artistic creative city I don't really know where that comes from I don't know where the that that seam of of creativity has grown from but I think people just felt they were they were entitled to have a go at doing this
07:10Yeah
07:10and then they could pick up a guitar and get a sense also it was part of the times I mean the ethos of the times was I mean I started really doing it I suppose in 1977
07:2177-78 so that was just no post-punk I mean that was kind of punk although I wasn't really punking myself
07:30it was just the that's what you did you could be in a band if you had a guitar and get a drummer and you could just have a go
07:39and then you go you go and see I mean I saw the Simple Minds in the Mars bar I was like what I was like how could people from Glasgow do that how could well they can you know and they were amazing
07:50and it was a squashed wee sweaty bar and Jim was there with his you know pudding haircut his Shakespearean haircut and it was just great and I thought well I want to be part of all this this is this leaves fun
08:05but of course it's not you know you have to work hard they weren't incredibly hard and you gotta get lucky as well
08:12we worked we you know we did our best but it never really happened for us so but I always maintained an interest in music
08:19but we got kind of tired and punch drunk really from the constantly trying and not really getting anywhere
08:27yeah yeah and then things like you know um local hero kind of sets sets the scene for acting becoming
08:34the big focus did you still kind of carry around a guitar and stuff like that you know were you
08:40not really I mean first of all I've never really been a guy I'm not the guy with the guitar at a party
08:46you know I'm not that that guy I don't come and join in and get to sing songs I've never been that guy
08:52um I think um I think I think I just wanted to look like here was such a a great kind of a
09:01uh a great accident a great piece of fate sort of sort of plucking me out of you know hanging about the amphora or the
09:14miles bar or or the college of building technology bar and and going to this other world that I was also
09:23very very interested in uh I thought well I've got to go with this so I didn't really I didn't I stopped
09:30sort of pursuing actually being a a signed up uh pop person there were a few kind of uh residual um
09:39uh things that happened I was always sort of a half kind of half in bands and half kind of there's
09:48there's lots of you know recordings of bits and pieces and things that we did in various uh studios
09:55that never went anywhere uh but I think my heart had gone I had gone out of it really and um I just
10:01wanted to get on with acting which seemed it we seemed strangely more that was kind of happening
10:07for me you know but that was quite terrifying as well I was didn't really know how to do that
10:14there's here we are
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