6. The Durutti ColumnLC
I love classical music. I love opera and I love ballet. And I was thinking of adding a classical recording. But if I was thinking of adding a classical record in my collection, I would go for their second album from The Durutti Column; LC. It’s just about perfection. Vini Reilly was a classical guitar genius. The beauty of these songs, to me it’s classical. OK it’s not clearly classical, I mean that’s obvious, but for me it’s somewhere in between. You hear people talking about Satie and Michael Nyman and the rest of it. I listen to them and Vini is right there, but nobody’s like Vini. I remember the first day I heard him; it was the double A single, ‘Madeleine’ and ‘Lips That Would Kiss’. I heard that when I was eighteen. I ended up trying to buy it off my mate who had bought it. And he gave us it. I think I bought everything else he ever made.Â
LC just sits there and floats. There are lots of great tracks, I can’t pick just one. And with the samples that came later on his records, how did he make them sound so ethereal? Why do they work so well? It reminds me of a much later track by PJ Harvey, ‘Written On The Forehead’, from Let England Shake. She uses these brilliant samples. The loops and things she’s using in the background are just magical. That’s as close as I’ve heard to Vini.Â
Just after I moved to Everton I went to Manchester a lot and I got to know Vini quite well. I’d go over to his room and we’d sit together and he’d play guitar. I’d have my mouth open watching him. And he’d be saying ‘ah, I’m writing this new tune, what do you think of it?’ Things like that happened a lot. There is a track called ‘Shirt No. 7’ done for me, it’s beautiful. He also asked me if I would do some lyrics, I told him that I just couldn’t do his music justice. There again if I’d have been ten years older I’d have tried! There’s a Cocteaus thing in there as well; obviously they don’t sound alike but you know where I’m coming from.Â
