Paul Draper

Paul Draper is my idol. He has been ever since the early knockings of 1997 when I was given a cassette (ask your Mum and Dad kids) by a school friend of three of Mansun’s first four E.P’s, containing Take it easy Chicken, Stripper Vicar, Wide Open Space, Drastic Sturgeon, Moronica, The Edge and more.

Tomorrow I will be in Manchester watching his second ever solo gig, and only his second in fourteen years. Next week I shall be at the Scala in Kings Cross seeing him again and I will definitely be going to at least one of his dates in 2018. I bought 5 copies of his debut solo album, Double White and Double Black Vinyl, 2CD & DVD, CD Digipack and Cassette. I am 36 years old. But I am not alone. In fact, I may even be conservative in my fandom.

People who were teenagers in the 70’s had Bowie, Bolan and Mercury. Androgynous pop chameleons who turned heads and the music world upside down. Come the 90’s we had “lads”. Oasis lads, Blur lads, Britpop lads. I love these too. But they weren’t original. They were The Beatles, Slade, The Stones, The Kinks, The Small Faces, The Smiths, The Stone Roses. What were Mansun?

At that point, February/March 1997, they were a strange mix of The Sex Pistols, Prince, Queen and Bowie. I can’t claim to be a huge fan of any of them. Quite the opposite, with the exception of Queen, and to a lesser degree The Sex Pistols (who doesn’t own Never Mind the B*llocks?), I grew up with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones etc but definitely not the others. Paul and Chad wore Vivienne Westwood and bondage trousers and both had big, coiffured hair and were sexually ambiguous. I was nearly 16 but was not confused. I had a handle on my sexuality but nonetheless, they were beguiling and fascinating. Paul looked incredible and to hear about his perspective on those days, he seems to be almost dismissive of their style, which if anything makes it even better.

Who couldn’t be styled by Paul Smith, wear Fred Perry or Ben Sherman and have a Mod haircut, wear a beany hat and Adidas trainers? In fact, if you watch the Take it easy, Chicken video, there is Paul, baggy everything and the stereotypical hat and trainers. So, he consciously changed the image of the band, and this certainly wouldn’t have been a stylist from Parlophone. People would contrive to be like Liam Gallagher or Damon Albarn or Richard Ashcroft. Mansun were contrived to be like no one else at that time. It wasn’t to look cool. It was to be odd and p*ss people off.

Above all though, the music was amazing. Bizarre, twisted, weird conceptual lyrics. Bond theme like, 80’s synths, Beatle-esque sieges, acoustic elements and essential guitar hooks.

Within a few weeks of playing that tape to death, the fifth E.P “She Makes My Nose Bleed” came out and I followed my instincts and bought both copies of the CD. Probably the most chart friendly song released up to that point, despite the mass appeal of Wide Open Space a few months previous, this was back in the day when you’d see your favourite bands on Top of the Pops (it feels like I’m talking about being a kid in the 70’s) and I even recorded it on VHS (just keep your Dad close at hand kids) and watched scores of times. My hazy recollection now has Paul wearing tartan bondage trousers. I could be wrong.

And only a couple of weeks hence and the album was out. The magnum opus. “Attack of the Grey Lantern”. Me and the same friend who provided the tape rode straight from school to town at 3.15pm, and Our Price. That evening, in the dark back room at my Mum’s (nothing spooky, I just didn’t turn the lights on when the sun set) I was doing some GCSE coursework and played AOTGL on repeat. To this day, the strings of “The Chad who loved me” conjures the memory of being in front of the computer, darkness all around me and then Paul comes in “All comes crashing down, on your desperate icon”. Gives me the chills writing that now.

It’s lived with me ever since. More so than any other album in the past twenty years. It’s terrifying to think it’s that long ago, but it is incredibly fitting that my idol has his debut solo album out and is playing his debut solo shows. I never had a doubt that the record, Spooky Action, would be incredible, and of course it sounds like Mansun. It has AOTGL synths, Six’s off the wall, avant garde style and even Little Kix’s pop with some songs written around this period and for what turned into Kleptomania. Then, it has a whole new perspective with Catherine AD’s co-writes and Jon Barnett’s great drumming, different to Andy Rathbones but no less effective.

For some reason I feel quite emotional about the coming gigs. Not because any of the songs are attached to anything specifically painful or even the opposite but the band, the man, the albums and the songs have been a constant for the past two decades. Everything that I’ve lived through has been soundtracked by his voice, never more than a month or two off duty.

For a reason buried deep into my psyche I didn’t see Mansun again after the rescheduled Guildford Civic gig in January 1999 from the Six tour. Within a few months my A Levels arrived, University, student poverty, post Uni debt in 2002 and then they’d split within the next year.
I was lucky enough to see them four times. The first was a matter of weeks after AOTGL arrived at Reading Alleycat and it remains one, if not the number one gig I’ve ever been to. Dark, moody, he barely spoke but it was the most exciting thing I’d ever seen.

Now, here we are. Following the top 20 success of Spooky Action it looks like it’s going to be marathon rather than a quick sprint. Album number two, more gigs, more amazing music as I creep ever closer to 40.

We know there’s going to be one or two or maybe three Mansun songs in the set, whatever those songs are, you may see me with a tear in my eye or I may have gotten over my nostalgic whimsical moment and just be enjoying the now. Which I will be doing anyway.

It’s just really fucking exciting.

Have a ball everyone!!