England Screaming is an album of new recordings of songs I wrote between 1982 and 84. The original recordings were released forty years ago on an album that nobody liked, least of all me. It's always been a regret to me because I think these songs mark my 'coming of age' as a songwriter. I decided to re-record them, just to see if I could, and to lay to rest the ghastliness surrounding the original release.
​In the winter of 2024 we were tarting up a house in upstate New York (I'd practically rebuilt the place with my bare hands) so we could sell it and move to England. I'd spend the day on repairs and redecoration and in the evening my friend and neighbour, Sam Shepherd, would pop over to play drums on yet another hastily prepared backing track. It was meant to be light relief, a way to keep my hand in.

The recording process was intense but somewhat haphazard.
I could hardly bear to even look at the original album - I keep it hidden in the depths of my archive. I couldn't listen to it, not even for the sake of reference - I didn't want to risk my wife and musical hero, Amy Rigby, hearing it, and even when she was out of the house I couldn't listen to it. And I certainly didn't want Sam hearing it. I don't think I even told him I'd recorded the songs before - as far as he was concerned they were some new tunes I was working on. I did the whole thing from memory. Regardless of the reasons for this I think it was beneficial to the process.
I think I pretty much stuck to my unrealised vision, the one I had back in 1984: a psychedelic garage thing with undercurrents of broken easy listening. I haven’t changed much in forty years, just developed. I know how to do it now. It’s a thing I call the Symphony of Filth.
On the new recordings (no it isn’t a remix of the old record) I played pretty much all the instruments except the drums, with guest appearances from Amy Rigby on piano and backing vocals, Marc Valentine on backing vocals and tambourine, and Graham (Graham) Beck on piano. Graham and I met and first started playing together at Hull College of Art in 1973.
I wondered how the songs would stand up - would they have any relevance today? Would they stand the test of time? I dropped a couple of songs, not because they weren’t any good, but because they were really problematic to record. I think the difficulty they caused was their way of telling me what I’d always suspected, that they didn’t belong on this album. I was left with eight long songs. Companion pieces, like Raymond Carver short stories, not that I’m comparing myself to him.

In 1982 I secured a bent mortgage through a bent building society manager. It meant moving to the Medway Towns, so my long-term girlfriend and I found ourselves living in a two-up two-down house in Chatham, Kent. I’d been cut adrift from the music business. No one wanted me - I was old news, yesterday’s papers - apparently I had a reputation and it wasn’t a good one. The word was out - I was a self-destructive drunk. But in 1983 I could kid myself that I’d got it under control and I was a very creative drunk.
Once I got used to the isolation it was quite exhilarating. I felt liberated - my songwriting took on an entirely different tone. There was no one telling me what I should be writing any more, so I wrote about what was around me, stuff I knew about - drugs, home ownership, bankruptcy and bridal wear; being from somewhere, keeping up appearances, delusion, failure. A mundane life in a terraced street, itself a testament to the skills of the most successful replacement door and window sales agents.
Chatham was rough. There was a huge naval dockyard but this had just shut down. In 1982 the Medway Towns, Strood, Rochester, Chatham and Gillingham were in economic decline.
We settled into life in this weird conglomeration of small towns and some kind of routine imposed itself. I’d wake up with a hangover at about half past six or seven o’clock in the morning, the cold light from white street lamps leaking through cheap, unlined curtains. My first thought usually was that they’d soon find out we weren’t legit and then they’d take the house away from us. There was little pleasure in home ownership. The dawn chorus round here was sung by starter motors - the sound of other people going to work. I didn’t have a job.
I walked around, cataloguing the increasing collection of boarded-up shops in the high street. I came home and wrote reams of lyrics about what I saw. I spied on the neighbours - who were spying on us anyway - I wrote about them. I got a tax bill for money I didn’t even know I’d earned during my days as a success. I freaked out, walked into town and into a grubby employment agency. They put me in a minibus with some other desperate people and I woke up in a food factory. I wrote about that too.
Playtime was officially over.