Mickey Dale, (seen here second from the left), keyboard player with English band Embrace chats with Kevin Cooper about his love of curry, opening for Coldplay at The Cardiff Millennium Stadium, their latest album Love Is A Basic Need and their forthcoming tour of the UK.


Mickey Dale is the keyboard player for the English band Embrace, an alternative rock band from West Yorkshire. Dale only officially joined the band in October 1998, just after the release of their first album, The Good Will Out. He had been playing live and on record with the rest of the band beforehand, but was an ‘unofficial member’.

To date Embrace have released seven studio albums, one singles album and one B-sides compilation. As well as Mickey Dale, the band consists of brother’s singer Danny McNamara and guitarist Richard McNamara, bassist Steve Firth, and drummer Mike Heaton.

In March 2006, Embrace was chosen to record England’s official football World Cup song, World At Your Feet, which received its first radio airplay on 21st April on BBC Radio 1. It was released on 5th June and entered the UK Singles Chart at number 3.

Whilst busy rehearsing for their forthcoming tour, Mickey Dale took some time out to have a chat with Kevin Cooper and this is what he had to say.

Hi Mickey how are you?

I’m fine thank you Kevin, how are you doing, are you ok?

I’m very well thank you and before we start let me firstly thank you for taking the time to speak to me today.

It’s my pleasure but let me just warn you that it has been one of those crazy weeks. I have recently had one of those colds that you seem to get rid of and then it comes back again a few days later and bites you in the backside. It has really knocked me for six so I have just been feeling under the weather and have not been able to fully concentrate on anything, but I am fine. I suppose that it is only a bit of man flu really (laughter). I recently spoke to a friend of mine and he told me that he has had it three times now so I will just hope that it goes before summer gets here (laughter).

Well my next question is usually how is life treating you but I don’t know if I dare ask you or not (laughter).

To be honest with you, apart from the cold everything else has been going almost worryingly well (laughter). I have always been a glass half empty kind of guy and the last few things that I have got really wrapped up and involved in have just been so really rewarding and fulfilling and have done really well. Whenever Embrace have some down time I find myself busy producing other bands and some of those bands are now starting to do very well. So you know what, I can’t actually complain about anything at the moment.

Good, well I have been playing the latest album Love Is A Basic Need for the past couple of weeks now and I have to say that I think that it is a great piece of work.

That’s great to hear, thanks for that.

So putting you on the spot, why should I go out and buy the album? This is your chance to sell it to me (laughter).

(Bastard) okay well here goes (laughter). What I will say to you is that it is amazing, and it is the best thing that we have ever done (laughter). You need to write just how wonderful you think the album is. If you do that for me then I will send you lots of treats, how’s that (laughter). In all seriousness, we released the album Embrace back in 2014 and as much as we are all really proud of it, it did really well and it was also like a reinvention of the band, especially after there had been so many years of us not actually doing anything at all; what we all affectionately call our wilderness period, three years of not really seeing one another and then another three years where we all decided that it was time for us to knuckle down which we did and to be honest we reinvented Embrace which was a really fun and interesting thing to do.

Then with the latest album Love Is A Basic Need, I think that maybe for the first time since we released the first album it just felt very comfortable being Embrace and simply doing what comes naturally. Lots of bands often have a suspicion that if it comes easily then it can’t be any good. They feel that you have always got to be pushing really hard to break new ground and push the boundaries and the envelope, and all of those things that artists and musicians say that they are doing or they want to do. However, this time around we all felt so comfortable just sitting around and playing. Danny (McNamara) would bring a new song into the studio and we would all sort of start playing it. We decided that it was time that we would simply let the song dictate where we should go with it in terms of instrumentation, how busy it would be played or just how much space we would leave.

So, for me, this has been the most enjoyable Embrace album ever and I think it really shows through. However, I have to be honest with you and say that I have not listened to it since we finished it. I wanted to distance myself from it but then the vinyl test pressing arrived and they always come to me because I think that I may be the only one who has a working record player (laughter). So I put it on the player, sat down and it was like ‘oh my god’ I just felt so proud of the album because we had gone back to our core sound quite naturally. It wasn’t a conscious decision but without wanting to jinx the album, I am very proud of it. I am not going to say to you that it is our best album ever and all of that PR bullshit, but I am very proud of what we managed to do. I really can’t wait to get out there and start playing these songs to our audience.

If you had to review the album, then how would you sum it up in one word?

Oh flipping heck, one word (laughter). You see there are so many tough subjects that the album touches upon. Danny went through a really hard time with a relationship that ended, but his life is now great. He’s now married to the most beautiful girl. However, quite a lot of the songs have been written from a really dark place. So the album is very positive and uplifting. There is a darkness that runs through the album which says “we are a long time dead and life is short so we should all get less wrapped up in things which cause our brains to malfunction such as the distractions and stresses of modern life”.

We have all got to remember the good stuff because you can get so wrapped up in work and other things that are maybe not so healthy. You kind of lose sight and then start to think ‘god, I have just spent the last ten years wasting energy on something that wasn’t remotely good for me’. So having said all of that, the album is positive because it comes from a realisation of what goes on around us in the complicated world and just what a negative force that can be. Also the title Love Is A Basic Need reminds us that we all need food and shelter, but as much as we need that we also need love. So I would have to say that it is a very positive album. You simply cannot underestimate the power of a cuddle; that’s why I am in a band called Embrace (laughter).

How do you work as a band, now that the album has been released and is out there, when will you all start working on the next studio album?

That’s a really good question, and the way that we normally work is that an idea will be bought to the table by either Danny (McNamara) or Richard (McNamara) first; they will have a seed of a song, we will then all get together and we will start working on that song and begin fleshing it out. We have our own recording studio so every single thing that we do is documented, you have to remember to record all of those happy accidents. So hopefully the guys are already using all of that energy and momentum. Whenever you finish a record and you are really proud of it, sometimes you don’t want to down tools and think ‘thank god that’s done, I want to now have a break and perhaps do something completely different to satisfy my other interests’.

I will be seeing both of them pretty soon so I will ask them “hey have you got any new songs” (laughter). I am hoping that whilst the creative juices have been flowing, they have written down a few ideas for songs because you never know when writer’s block will strike (laughter). It’s a bugger when it does; you just sit there for hours staring at your instrument and you haven’t any ideas whatsoever. You just have to persevere and hope that something will come into your head otherwise it’s a case of ‘I will just have to drag myself to the edge of my sanity’ (laughter).

I don’t know just how true this is but I once read that Bob Dylan writes a new song every day.

Yes I have heard that too and it’s amazing that some people can do that. I have also heard that Nick Cave writes all of his lyrics simply by going in to his office. He leaves his house, arrives at his office at nine o’clock, sits there with a typewriter and writes lyrics until five pm and then he goes home (laughter). That’s bizarre isn’t it; how can you decide when that inspiration is going to hit you. It must be brilliant when you can say “I know that I am going to get all my best ideas between nine and five” (laughter). It seems to me to be a very strange way of doing things but Nick is a genius and it works for him. I am in no position to either criticise or mock.

I am a big believer in that when the world is asleep then thoughts come more easily. It’s probably just because the whole street have turned their TV’s off (laughter). However, I sometimes think about Wi-Fi and how it is just there floating in the ether. Just what kind of interference is it causing to my brain and my train of thought (laughter). When everyone is asleep and all of the computers are switched off and people are using less Wi-Fi and mobile phones, maybe it is not measurable but maybe there is a way in which it causes better pathways for intelligent thinking.

If that is the case I wonder just what Paul McCartney’s excuse is for writing the dross that he writes (laughter).

Well in his case it is perhaps down to him using far too much weed back in the 80s (laughter). Having said that when he could write them, god did he write them.

They don’t use the term fillers anymore for album tracks that are not up to the mark, they call them McCartney’s (laughter).

(Laughter) how many McCartney’s have you got on this album, a whole frog chorus of them.

I got fed up with Mr McCartney in the mid-70s because there was usually one, or if you were lucky, two decent tracks on his albums and the rest were bloody awful (laughter).

I know exactly what you mean. His early solo stuff was brilliant, albums such as McCartney, Ram and Band On The Run but yes I have to agree with you, after that there would be a decent tune every five years or so and the majority of his albums were shocking weren’t they. Bless him (laughter). Even when you know what you are putting out is dross, it can be very hard to stop yourself especially when your record company is screaming for the next album. I guess that it becomes very hard to say no.

What I find annoying is when you go to a concert and it is absolutely awful, and could be the worst concert that you have ever seen, but because the majority of the people there are die-hard fans of the artist, they will never say that it was bad, they will say that it is the best concert that they have been to for years. I sometimes sit there thinking that I have got the wrong ears on (laughter).

(Laughter) I personally think that for the very established bands, there is a great loyalty there. Even if the fans think ‘the last two albums have been bloody awful’ at the gig the band will most probably only play two or three tracks off those albums. That is the great thing about going to see a band live, especially if they have been around for a while. They have got a massive back catalogue from which to choose a set list. I would never want Embrace to be that band who are so arrogant enough to think ‘let’s play all of the new songs plus three B-Sides and let’s be deliberately obnoxious and send the fans away disgruntled’. I don’t believe in that.

Gigs nowadays are very expensive; there is a lot of planning involved behind the scenes, getting there, organising baby sitters or whatever. You don’t want to send them away disgruntled simply by saying “well we are in the world of entertainment” (laughter). You don’t really want to be re-drawing the boundaries of entertainment do you (laughter). I don’t like bands to do that but I think that it is quite interesting when a stand-up comedian pushes the boundaries to the point where you leave the show thinking ‘well that wasn’t enjoyable was it’ it might have been thought provoking but there are only a small amount of people who can get away with that.

Anyway enough about other people, let’s talk more about Embrace. I have to say that I was disappointed to miss out on seeing you in November at the Venue down the road in Derby. How was that?

I love The Venue, it is a fantastic intimate place and we had a really good night there. It was a good day out actually, we spent a bit of time wandering around Derby, and in fact I had a really good curry just around the corner from The Venue (laughter). I live in Bradford you see and there are only so many days that you can be away from home before you start craving a curry (laughter). Generally, I can go for about three days but then I have to have a curry. All in all it was a great day; we had a great gig and the crowd were superb. It was one of those gigs where you can’t get from the stage back to the dressing room without walking through the crowd.

We finished our main set and didn’t want to go straight into the encore, we really should leave a little gap, so we all just stood there behind a fake partition wall, crouching down and thinking that the crowd couldn’t see us (laughter). But of course we were actually in full view of the crowd (laughter). It really was lovely, and I have to say that was a cracking little tour that.

On the subject of tours you will be playing here in Nottingham at Rock City on Friday 30th March. What can we expect?

Well we have played Rock City many times now and we always have a great night in there. We always try to be as relaxed as we can be, and always engage in a bit of banter with the audience, who are now thankfully slightly too old to come flying over the barrier like they did back in 1998 at the Brixton Academy (laughter). I remember them having their t-shirts off, flying over the barrier having lost one of their trainers with blood pouring out of the sides of their heads where they didn’t quite fully clear the barrier (laughter). Those people now come along and bring their kids with them. Over the years we have watched these people blossom into adults with beautiful children.

Can you explain this to me, why do grown men queue up for thirty minutes to pay five pounds for a pint of lager only to then throw it all over the photographer, who just so happens to be me, in the pit (laughter)?

I have absolutely no idea, and that has simply got to go down as one of life’s great mysteries (laughter).

Is Rock City a must play venue for you?

Yes it is and I can honestly say that we have never had a bad gig there. It is a typical rock and roll venue. I like how they have got that raise bit at the back so even when it is packed to the rafters, in general, everybody can see exactly what is going on. I’ve got very fond memories of the times that we have played at Rock City. It’s a good place and I like Nottingham. Nottingham is a lot like Leeds, you can now go and see three great bands every night in Leeds. We really do need to protect the music particularly now that we are living in a society which is reluctant to pay for it. Whenever they are using the likes of Spotify I don’t think that they realise that by consuming their music in that way nothing really gets put back into the people who have actually created the music. Spotify is one of my gripes really; if you are a fan of music then it is probably the greatest invention since the record player.

But if you hope to make a bit of a living and you want to get something back for all of your efforts, then Spotify is most probably, evil is a strong word, a massive problem shall we say. And I have no idea as to how we can now solve that particular problem. If people remember to buy the odd CD here and there now and again that would be grand I think. Don’t get me wrong, I do use Spotify but I use it like I used to use the radio. If I hear something that I like on Spotify I will then go out and buy it. It is just how we were bought up isn’t it. We all bought records, we would get our pocket money and would stand outside HMV on a Saturday morning hoping that they had a copy left (laughter). And to be honest I don’t think that will ever leave me. I have got friends my age who have sold their entire record collections claiming “I’ve got Spotify, it’s all on there” (laughter). That to me is bizarre but it all seems to make sense to them. I agree with you totally; collecting music nowadays is a passionless pursuit. I like to sit down, listen to the album and feel like I own it.

My major gripe is that we need more demand for vinyl, which will then in turn drive down the price.

I was having that very discussion with a friend of mine recently because he was saying that he thought that the cost of vinyl was still far too expensive. It is my understanding that it currently costs between four and six pounds to manufacture a vinyl album in a decent sleeve. If you decide to release the album in a gatefold sleeve then the cost rises to around seven pounds fifty pence. So I suppose that if you factor in the fact that that band have then got to market that album, together with their recording costs, then I personally don’t mind really paying twenty quid for an album on vinyl.

I suppose that you also have to factor in the shipping costs because no doubt they will have to have the records pressed over in Croatia because there are no pressing facilities here in the UK anymore.

That’s very true although I have recently been involved in the pressing of a record and I actually had them pressed up over in the Czech Republic and I have to be honest and say that the quality of both the vinyl and the sleeve is absolutely amazing. It is absolutely wonderful. I received the test pressing for a band that I was producing called Glass Mountain from Bradford and it sounds absolutely phenomenal. We were all absolutely gobsmacked.

So if you then decided to have a run of albums pressed, what lead-time are you then looking at?

To be totally honest with you, this time round it has been really good. Basically, all of the pressing plants are based over in Europe but the companies that you order through are based here in the UK. There are currently two or three different companies that you can go to in order to get your vinyl pressed. They are just like brokers really because once they take your order the actual pressing always takes place in Europe. I always use a company who are based down in Plymouth called DMS (Disc Manufacturing Services) and they are amazing. They press both CD’s and vinyl. A couple of years ago I had an album pressed and it took sixteen weeks which was an absolute nightmare.

However, this time around when I sent the Glass Mountain order in at the end of October, it arrived on my desk some six weeks after we placed the order. I have to say that in my opinion that amount of turnaround time for three hundred vinyl albums to be pressed plus artwork is simply phenomenal. They were all beautifully packaged, two hundred of them were pressed on clear red vinyl and the other hundred have been pressed on bright pink vinyl. So you can really get into as much of the nitty gritty as you want. The finish that is most popular at the minute is splatter vinyl (laughter). Vinyl is in demand and believe me when I say that the demand is increasing each and every day.

One of the major problems that you are faced with is that all of the cool bands together with all of the Indie labels all want to get vinyl pressed, so we were worried that we wouldn’t be able to get near to our lead-time especially as Sainsbury’s and Tesco started stocking vinyl. They just want to stock repressing of albums that our parents would have bought (laughter). Do we really need the pressing plants to be clogged up by repressing ABBA Gold while the likes of Half Man, Half Biscuit are struggling to get their latest album pressed (laughter)? It’s at that point that a bit of Indie snobbery kicks in. But to be fair the repressing market doesn’t really seem to have affected it.

Jack White from The White Stripes recently told me that there is a German company who have started building brand new vinyl presses for the first time in decades. Jack himself has opened up a brand new pressing plant over in Nashville. During a silly drunken pub conversation one night, I was hoping that we could get a load of mates together and buy a vinyl press. We would put it in a glass fronted building in either Bradford or Leeds so people would be able to see this miraculous process taking place before their very eyes as they were walking past. But when we looked into it the cost was just absolutely crazy.

You are looking at one hundred thousand pounds per machine and you need three machines, plus the cost of the premises. The other thing is you need the people on board who really know what they are doing when it comes to pressing vinyl, and sadly most of them are either retired or dead. So you have got to try and find these old timers who were passionate about it. The other thing is that it’s not a glamorous environment, it’s a factory environment, it’s noisy, it’s hot, it’s dirty, it is nothing at all like the modern CD plants which is almost like a bloody laboratory. It is very sweaty and very hot.

But it’s that smell isn’t it, you simply do not get that smell anywhere else other than off new vinyl.

Yes I know, its magical isn’t it (laughter).

The problem that I am faced with is trying to work out which is an original copy of a record that I want and which is a modern day copy. They are so good that it is almost impossible to tell them apart. Even the writing located in the runout is being copied to almost perfection.

Really, well that has really surprised me. So what you are telling me is that people are repressing the original vinyl in order to pass the records off as originals?

Yes they are, especially when it comes to Northern Soul vinyl singles. We have mentioned him earlier, the most collectable Paul McCartney And Wings album is the Back To The Egg picture disc. There was only ever a limited edition of just 200, and possibly even as few as 100 pressed and these were never commercially available. The album was a rare in-house MPL Communications picture disc which was given out to record company staff, friends and family. Modern day copies can sell for in excess of one thousand pounds and even the experts cannot tell the two albums apart?

Right, okay. Do you know I had never even given that any thought whatsoever, it sounds like there is money to be made from this if you are, let’s say, not one hundred percent honest. Ebay must be rife with bootleg recordings. In my opinion Ebay has affected the collectable vinyl market, now everybody knows what everything is worth whereas before you would be dragging yourself around various car boot sales at all hours of the day and night (laughter). I have a good mate who keeps on going to car boot sales on Sunday mornings simply because he keeps unearthing The Beatles treasures for next to nothing (laughter). With the internet now being bombarded with Discogs the genuine bargains appear to be much harder to find.

But that was the joy of collecting wasn’t it, ferreting around in old junk shops and second-hand shops trying to uncover something a bit special.

Yes it was but alas, those days are now becoming a thing of the past as they are vanishing fast.

I could speak to you all day about records and the joys of collecting but I really must talk some more about you and Embrace. Picking you up on something that you mentioned earlier, Coldplay, what was it like opening for them?

It was amazing and it was also lovely to see them because there is a lot of history there. Coldplay opened for us when we were headlining the Blackpool Tower Ballroom back in 2000. They were supporting us and they were so grateful of that fact because as they have always said, back then it was so difficult for a young band just starting out to get themselves some decent gigs. We gave them the opening slot simply because we liked them. We have all kept in touch since then. We ran into them again when we were recording our third album at Parr Street Studios up in Liverpool. They were booked into the studios to record their second album, and Danny (McNamara) and Chris (Martin) kept in touch and over the years became very close friends.

The two of them spoke last year; I think that Danny phoned Chris who said “that is really weird how you have just phoned me because I have just spent the weekend going back over my collection of Embrace records and it has been brilliant. It has reminded me just how much of an influence Embrace was on Coldplay when we were just starting out” (laughter). Obviously Danny was very touched by what Chris had said to him especially when Chris said to him that he would like to do something to show the bands gratitude. Danny informed Chris that we were in the process of making an Embrace documentary and that it would be lovely if Chris and Coldplay could be in it, saying what he had just said but this time say it to a camera.

Chris said that he would be glad to do that but said that he was thinking of something bigger. He then asked Danny if we would like to go along and be the main support for Coldplay on both nights of their Cardiff Millennium Stadium gigs. Chris said “why don’t you run it past the guys and see what they say” to which Danny replied “I don’t need to ask them, I already know what the answer will be” (laughter). The two shows were absolutely amazing. Embrace have played there before as part of a tsunami benefit concert back in 2005 so we already knew what the venue was like. The Coldplay crowd were great to us despite us being the support band. Everybody was so attentive.

We got two entirely different experiences of the venue. The first night they left the roof on as it was literally peeing it down outside, but having said that it was still a good gig. However, on the second day the sun was glaring down on us, they took the decision to take the roof off the venue, and I have to say that it really did feel as though we were playing at a festival. It was a completely different atmosphere to the previous day. The problem was that the Coldplay lightshow really did suffer on the second night although it was still so amazing that you still appreciated it but on the first night with the roof on, everyone was wearing flashing wristbands which were all operated by the lighting engineer via remote control. It really is a phenomenally high-tech operation.

And Coldplay can play live to sixty thousand people and still make it feel like a small intimate show. They were two very different but absolutely brilliant nights. Even if you are not a massive fan of their music I don’t think that you could go and see them and not come away from the show feeling that you had been entertained by it. The whole experience is simply uplifting. In my opinion Coldplay have now been a part of the musical fabric for the past fifteen years, and they have written so many beautiful songs. I can’t really deny them that at all.

If I had to push you what would you say has been the highlight of your career so far?

Hells bells, I would have to say that the Coldplay thing most definitely comes to mind, supporting them for two nights. Do you know what, I honestly don’t know (laughter). We have done a lot of good stuff haven’t we. There has been some great travelling, and sometimes it is just the little things that you remember. The times that you get that phone call on a Sunday night when you are at a checkout at Tesco and your manager is calling you to tell you that your latest record is at number one (laughter). It is that kind of stuff that I always remember (laughter). Then I think ‘oh I had better nip back into Tesco and get myself another bottle of wine’ (laughter).

I would have to say that, thinking about it, the two nights with Coldplay are ranking quite high. We got to play to one hundred and twenty thousand people, and we were made to feel so welcome as a band by the Coldplay audience, together with their crew.

What about when you were chosen to record England’s official football World Cup 2006 song ‘World At Your Feet’ which you released on 5th June and got to number three on the UK Singles Chart. Surely that must have excited you?

(Laughter) well let me just say that we don’t talk about that. To be honest with you half of us didn’t want to do it. It was our label at that time that really pushed us into doing it and let me tell you, they were very persuasive with their arguments. So as you can imagine at the time there was a proper divided camp.

Which side of the fence were you on?

I honestly thought that it was a ridiculous idea as I am not really a football fan (laughter). I can sit and watch a football game, and find it really enjoyable especially when you are watching first class footballers doing their thing because it can be both exciting and mesmerising. But, I don’t know, football songs are generally bloody rubbish aren’t they (laughter). Having said that New Order did a good one didn’t they; World In Motion which I personally thought was brilliant. So yes, I suppose that we got sucked into it. The arguments for were very good; ‘it will propel you forward, you will be selling albums and tickets faster than Coldplay and Keane’ and all that (laughter).

One of the arguments that the label put to us was the fact that we weren’t getting any younger so we did it and I have to say that it was brilliant (laughter). However, because we received so much publicity which was purely and simply based upon this World Cup thing, the football was horrifically bad, England were almost out of the competition from the get go, and it was almost like we were the scapegoats. You could almost hear the footballers saying “we told you that we shouldn’t have had Embrace record the World Cup song’ (laughter). It honestly felt as though the whole disaster was being blamed on us and the bloody record. We tried to collectively dust ourselves down and move forward with a smile on our faces.

We had had so much tabloid exposure, you simply could not avoid Embrace. The football went really badly but we tried to carry on with our campaign by saying “okay, well that didn’t really go to plan, let’s just release the single that we were going to release” which we did but it really didn’t catch on. After that we released I Can’t Come Down which was a quintessential Embrace ballad with a massive chorus, strings, everything including the kitchen sink and that did even worse. Even though we had a great year that year, we played the Forestry Commission tour, two sell-out headline tours, lots of travelling, that year really was phenomenal but we all felt that the World Cup had really left a bit of a funny smell.

So the question is, would you do it again if you were asked?

Not in a fucking million years. Having said that perhaps if they offered us a million pounds then I just might consider it (laughter). To me art and sport is always a difficult marriage I think. So no, I wouldn’t go anywhere near it. I’m surprised that we didn’t get asked to do the cricket one, especially as we have a record called Ashes but that call never came in (laughter). Maybe that would have done better. Being honest I have to say that World At Your Feet wasn’t really a football song, it was just a song filled with a positive message. Perhaps we were being a bit too poetic or artistic with it. Perhaps we should just have sung ‘come on and score a goal’ (laughter).

You would have unfortunately have missed out on the cricket as the BBC always use Soul Limbo by Booker T. & The MG’s (laughter).

I know and that tune is absolutely fantastic. You hear that song and you immediately think of cricket.

What was the first record that you bought?

That was Oliver’s Army by Elvis Costello & The Attractions on a 7” single.

Who did you first see performing live in concert?

Now don’t laugh at this but my dad took me to see a band called Sad Café at the St George’s Hall in Bradford. But I think that the first gig that I went to that I actually spent my own money on for a ticket, is when I went with a bunch of mates, and the concert completely blew my mind was Happy Mondays at the Queens Hall also in Bradford. It was around the time that they had released their first album Bummed which had Lazyitis and Hallelujah on it. There was literally sweat dripping off the ceiling. It was the craziest thing that I have ever seen.

What was the last song or piece of music that made me cry?

Wow, now let me think. God there are just so many because it really does happen so often. It has to be said that I cry very easily. However, the one that I really remember is there is a 4AD band called Daughter and there is a song on their album where the music just falls away and Elena (Tonra) is just talking about how she wished that she could just crawl back inside her mother. The music is so stark and her voice is so emotionally powerful, it is literally gobsmacking. A friend of mine recently played it to me and it just floored me. I wasn’t expecting something as honest, pointed and bare. It is just so direct. Whenever I hear it it is like ‘fucking hell’ and that is the one that really sticks in my mind.

Mickey on that note let me once again thank you for taking the time to speak to me today. It’s been brilliant. You take care and I will see you here in Nottingham at Rock City on Saturday 30th March.

It has indeed, it’s been enjoyable has that. Thank you Kevin and I will see you in March.