2. The Teardrop ExplodesWilder
‘Reward’ from their previous album was all over the charts and I went to see The Teardrop Explodes at the Hammersmith Palais when I was 14. I’d started at a new school, and latched on to a couple of girls who were going, so for me it was a first step into live music that then feeds your interest in the band itself.
Because of that I bought this book called Liverpool Explodes, which was almost like a kind of magazine book, but that got me into Echo and the Bunnymen and The Fall. I didn’t have any older siblings who could ease me through that journey or recommend things, so I was just constantly alert to recommendations from people that were either close to me or that I became a fan of. You’d look in the pages of Smash Hits and if Julian Cope said something about Scott Walker, you thought, ‘okay, I’ll go and check that out’. That to me was a more interesting route into listening to him than hearing very earnest male musicians from a later period boring on about his genius.
I had a massive fucking crush on Julian Cope as a kid. Our school was not far from Broadcasting House. Emma [Anderson], who I was in Lush with, her dad ran this naval and military club in Piccadilly so we would go over there. If Kid Jensen had a session from someone in the evening, we would rush up to Broadcasting House and wait outside with our autograph books. I remember The Teardrop Explodes being on. I got my autograph, got a kiss and was very, very happy.
