Wood And Jesus Danced (Twice)

The true story of the milltown brothers
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-0-85716-290-8
Verlag: McNidder and Grace
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 260 Seiten

The True Story of the Milltown Brothers tells the story of a good band that got very lucky and then got very unlucky. It describes their meteoric rise and 'much ignored demise' and demonstrates the role luck plays in all our lives, however much we like to think we're in control. The Milltown Brothers from Burnley were discovered by Steve Lamacq playing their fifth gig at the Bull & Gate in London in May 1988. Signed to A&M in 1990, they had a publishing deal with EMI and their debut album Slinky was awarded 5 stars in Q magazine. Oasis supported them less than a year before the release of Definitely Maybe. They shared the bill with Nirvana in Boston, the day before Nirvana released the paradigm changing Nevermind. The promoter described their performance as the event highlight. Relentlessly touring the UK, Europe, America and Japan they were on the cusp of global success... 'This is not just a story about a band - although as a cautionary tale for young aspiring indie wannabees it should be a must read - it also explores more universal human experiences: how much luck plays in our lives, the importance of being resilient in the face of disappointment and change, and the importance of loyalty and brotherhood. Added to this, the book has cannily drawn in important happenings in the music scene that we traversed - the Stone Roses, Madchester, Nirvana, Grunge and Britpop.' Simon Nelson, guitarist, Milltown Brothers

Nigel Wood, a former brand and marketing creative director, lives in Slaithwaite in West Yorkshire. He is mildly obsessed with how life is just an infinitesimal number of slender slices of luck. He's now a sculptor of driftwood and unloved stuff, and a writer.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wood, Nigel

Leseproben

Introduction

Way back when in 2004 I reluctantly met a pale, slightly out of shape, fair-haired bloke called Matthew Nelson, his name meant nothing to me, despite having a handful of Milltown Brothers’ songs on my iPod.

I was that kind of half-arsed music fan at the time. Growing family. Crazy job. DIY. Not enough seeing bands. That gap in-between being young, madly into it and old, madly into it.

He looked about 40, was strangely charming and had the gentle aura of a slightly world-weary, mild-mannered cherub. This was some 15 years after Mandy James had described him as ‘a sultry Botticelli angel’ in her review of the Milltown Brothers’ gig at Manchester Boardwalk in NME, November 1989.

He wasn’t what I’d been expecting, I’d been expecting a dickhead. And I certainly had no idea I wasn’t the first person to make the cherub or dickhead associations, including the man himself.

‘“That’s just behind our house!” explains Matt, the boy I called an “angry cherub” in a review, causing him to worry about his weight. “Cherubs are fat, aren’t they?” he asked.’ Andrew Collins, ‘Bed of Roses’, NME, May 1989.

‘You’re a dickhead.’ Anonymous girl at Manchester Poly to Matthew on his return from a summer playing with the Word Association in the south of France, October 1987.

‘We’re either portrayed as drunken dickheads or boring old farts. At this moment I happen to be drunk and it’s up to everyone else to decide whether I’m a dickhead.’ Matthew with Iestyn George, ‘Burn Baby Burnley’, NME, August 1991.

When I say I reluctantly met Matthew, it’s because I was being forced to work with him. I was making a couple of TV sponsorship films for the Co-operative Bank and was expecting – as was the norm – to appoint my own tried, tested and friendly film production team to do so.

But the Bank did things a little differently. Granada TV was ITV’s regional franchise in the north-west – Coronation Street, Tony Wilson… Jeremy Kyle on the rise – and one of the Bank’s key media partners.

Unfortunately for me, this meant I was obliged to use their in-house film production people. And Matthew was going to be my contact. I wasn’t looking forward to our first meeting, and neither was he. I couldn’t be bothered to get to know him and didn’t want to work with him.

I liked him instantly, finding him strangely charming. I couldn’t help it, and it says much about him that he never held my soon confessed preconceptions against me.

As does the fact he didn’t fill me in for ages about the link between him and my iPod. Not that he knew about my iPod, but you know. And even then it took a ridiculously rainy day in Blackpool for that to happen. It stopped us filming and I was running out of things to say in Wetherspoons. ‘Have you always done this kind of work?’

He paused for a few seconds, looking at me, then talked about his past in the most diffident, reticent and humble way you can imagine. Maybe it was still a bit raw, ten years on; I didn’t realise he was only three years out of what he now calls his seven-year recovery plan. Which was no plan at all, it had just taken that long. Said he’d been in this little band, they’d released a couple of albums. One had done okay. I had to ask him what they were called and delighted in pulling out my iPod and showing him his songs when he told me.

Typical as it is of him, such modesty is difficult to comprehend when looking at some of the boy’s press interviews from years earlier – as the ‘Burn Baby Burnley’ NME article from 1991 amply demonstrates: ‘We piss on so many other bands. I know we do. I have no peers on the current music scene.’

Matthew concurs: ‘Oh dear, it’s not easy pretending to be a rock star, I really should have been kept well away from the press.’

Twenty years later I started working on the idea for this book with the Milltown Brothers. It had been kicking around in my mind for years, a morality tale about a band that could have been huge, were about to be so and somehow managed to avoid it. And in their case leave Oasis, Blur, Pulp and the rest to the success those bands thoroughly deserved… as much as anyone does.

I’d become – and still am – mildly obsessed with how life is just an infinitesimal number of slender slices of luck from start to finish. At every scintilla of every moment, each of which constantly changes everything in our future, including the end.

It’s crazy, there’s the long bit before, then we’re born. The best odds anyone appears able to come up with for this to happen, specifically you or me, is 400 trillion to one. Then there’s the tiny bit when we’re alive, then the long bit after.

So how many people must there be who could have been a genius at something if they’d been given the smallest chance? They just had to be born, have the requisite talent and qualities, in the right place, at the right time, with the right influences and opportunities. All that time, all those places. But what if they weren’t that lucky? They were stuck down a coal mine. Died as an infant. Born in a wilderness. Walked round a corner. Were shy. Didn’t walk round a corner. They never got near a brush, pen, guitar or even a classroom. The greatest singer-songwriter the world has ever seen never got the chance to write or sing a note.

The Milltown Brothers were fortunate. And would never lay claim to be the greatest or the unluckiest whatever. But what happened to them demonstrates the utterly random nature of life splendidly.

Fast-forward and the idea dropped out of my mind, as most of them do. I’d left the working world where I knew Matthew. We were still in touch, but met only once or twice a year, usually to get drunk and laugh a lot.

Then he called in November 2023 to tell me the Milltown Brothers were playing a gig. Did I want to come along and make sure there was an audience? The idea for the book jumped out of nowhere into my mind and straight out of my mouth. And he said, ‘Why not?’

I’d come to believe the Milltown Brothers had been – and indeed still were – a bunch of reasonably talented, pleasant, decent, ordinary people. With a glint in their eyes and something else.

One of an admittedly very large group of bands and musicians who could have been much more commercially successful and well known than they were.

More significantly, they were one of a much smaller group of bands who got themselves in a position where they were on the cusp of being exactly that.

All while being ridiculously normal, friendly, flawed and nice with it. Nick Morrell agrees, he’s still a mate of theirs. He went to school with them and roadied for them, then spent his entire career in the army and the prison service. In November 2024 he drove the van for them to their sold-out gig at the Lexington in London.

They had the songs, enthusiasm, exposure and backing from a record company. They were blessed with good fortune, plus that something else. The sum of their parts was much greater than a bunch of five individuals who could play and sing a bit. They could do magic. When they got it right, they soared.

Early on they were incredibly lucky, too quickly. They got some big breaks and kept getting them. They had to catch up with themselves under the pitiless eye of the music industry. And possibly never quite did.

From the start it appeared nothing could go wrong. Hope inevitably turned to expectation. Less than four years after the band formed, four brilliantly good things happened in a mad six-month period in 1991, bringing it all to a climax.

Within each there was a twist in the tail. One didn’t appear disappointing at all. The next was instantly disappointing and impacted on everything else, but they brushed it off. The other two were slightly slower burners, but their collective impact was quietly devastating. Such that another thing went wrong, and another. Throw in one or two (maybe three or four) terrible decisions, and nothing could stop it all unravelling. Even while they...