00:06So you've just written an album?
00:09Yeah.
00:09Well, you've finished it now, haven't you?
00:10Yeah, it's out October 25th, in fact.
00:14Yeah, no, I heard some of it. I really liked it.
00:16Oh, good.
00:16It's very atmospheric, very sexy.
00:19Hmm.
00:20It's got a... I really liked the stuff you did with...
00:23You did some stuff with Dave Stewart, didn't you?
00:25Yeah.
00:26Was it an Alphaville?
00:27Yeah.
00:28I really liked that song.
00:29And there's collaborations with...
00:32Well, I did one with Phil Manzanera from Roxy as well.
00:35Yeah.
00:35And one with the Scissor Sisters.
00:38Yeah, and you worked with Manny, didn't you?
00:40Yeah, and one with Groove and Martha.
00:42And Flea as well.
00:43Yep.
00:43That's a pretty eclectic mix.
00:45And Marcus Muller, he is the kind of principal bass player.
00:50Yeah.
00:51But Flea does a couple of great things.
00:54Did you write most of your songs on piano?
00:56Yeah, nearly everything on piano, really.
00:59Maybe the origins of Dream Home come from a guitar.
01:05Me tinkering around on a guitar, actually.
01:08But everything was based around the piano.
01:12And I played the piano, obviously, on the Roxy records.
01:20And in my solo career, I didn't play so much keyboards.
01:25No.
01:25Because I would normally be doing covers of things, of songs, and too complicated for me to play.
01:33So I'd get somebody great to play.
01:35I'd say, yeah, can you play piano?
01:36And so it doesn't, that's why some of the solo records don't sound as much like me.
01:41Oh, okay.
01:42Because you're a different pianist.
01:43No, I really liked, I liked the single.
01:47And I liked Alphaville.
01:48And I liked Tender as a minute.
01:50That's great.
01:50I thought it was a really good album.
01:52I thought it was just very moody, very, but very sexy and very atmospheric.
01:57Almost like a film track and pop.
01:59But nice.
02:01Yeah, very good.
02:01It's nice to do that one, don't you?
02:02It's nice when music works with something else.
02:04Yeah.
02:05It was like a painting though, I thought.
02:07Your music's often like a painting.
02:09Do you paint?
02:10Well, that's what I wanted to do before I got into music.
02:14That's what I studied at college.
02:17And I'm still kind of, you know, very much in that world.
02:22Yeah.
02:23Like I work with musicians all the time, but at the end, you know, when it gets to dinner
02:31time, I'm normally with visual people.
02:34Yeah, yeah.
02:35David Gilmour has a wonderful story.
02:36Yeah, David Gilmour has on it, isn't he?
02:39Wow.
02:39Johnny Greenwood does something.
02:40Are these people that you met naturally and just picked up along the way?
02:44Yeah.
02:44Are they you friends with David Gilmour?
02:46Possibly I met them un-naturally.
02:47Oh, really?
02:49I can't imagine how you met Flea.
02:52Flea, I met through friends in the art world.
02:56Oh, okay.
02:56Because, you know, a lot of my friends are art people.
03:00Yeah.
03:00And he collects art a bit.
03:02Oh, he's a collector.
03:03And I also met him with Damien Hirst.
03:05He's a big friend of Damien's.
03:07Oh, okay.
03:07And when he was playing in the studio with us, you know, he was playing the most incredible
03:14bass.
03:15It was a Fender bass that Damien had customised.
03:18Yeah.
03:19It's covered with butterflies.
03:20Oh, wow.
03:21And it's a kind of artwork.
03:22Oh, that's great.
03:23Possibly the most expensive instrument known to man.
03:26Well, like your ring.
03:27It's a bit of a Damien ring, isn't it?
03:30Yeah, it is.
03:30Does Damien Hirst play an instrument?
03:33I don't know if he does.
03:33I don't think he needs to.
03:34No.
03:35He just covers them in butterflies.
03:37Yeah, yeah.
03:38Wow.
03:39And the cover, I spoke to Kate a while back and she was very excited.
03:43Oh, right.
03:43That you were putting her on the cover.
03:45Oh, right.
03:45We were excited too.
03:46She's brilliant, isn't she?
03:47Since this place is, where we are now, is in Olympia, it seemed natural to call at some
03:54point one of the albums I make here, Olympia, and this one seemed to fit the record somehow.
03:59And it's based on the Manet painting at Olympia.
04:02The cover.
04:02So once I got the title for the record, I thought, what should I do for the cover, should
04:06I go back to do a kind of cover girl concept, like some of the Roxy albums I've done.
04:13And I guess the solo ones a couple of times as well I've done that.
04:17And we thought that was a good idea.
04:21And then obviously I thought of the Manet picture because that's one of the paintings
04:25you kind of study in the 19th century French painting.
04:29And it was a very kind of modern picture for the time.
04:35It was incredible.
04:35It was quite shocking at the time, wasn't it?
04:37Very shocking and caused a big sort of uproar.
04:41And so I wanted to have some element of that in the picture.
04:47Yeah.
04:48So to have Kate, who has a bit of a rock and roll history.
04:51Yeah, she's very rock and roll.
04:53And yet there's the most glamorous girl in the world.
04:55She's an icon, isn't she?
04:56Yeah, she really is.
04:58So it all came together.
04:59It's an overused word, but she is a female icon.
05:02My ex-girlfriend who was in a band called Robots in Disguise, quite an electro band.
05:06They did an album cover called Boys.
05:10And they wanted to parody the Country Life album.
05:14They wanted to do it with boys.
05:15To lead.
05:16I mean, I got roped in at the time.
05:18So I think I was like this and my friend.
05:21So we did a cover, which, yeah.
05:24It was about five years ago actually.
05:25But yeah, so we recreated the Country Life album with Boys,
05:30which was quite an interesting concept.
05:40This journalist had gone up the Congo.
05:43Yeah.
05:44And found this tribe that were worshipping me.
05:48Really? Is this true?
05:50Yeah, it's absolutely true.
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