Now:
Two years to think, two years to assess and listen to the advice and encouragement of friends and players alike, two years to listen to ‘why have you given up after such a promising start’…album sales, critical acclaim, national airplay, a session for Janice Long, Radio 2 help and guidance… and the non-action of a record company managed by a balloon: It leaves a bitter taste. As with us fragile humans, the weak point is always where we fracture. I fractured in a “different†way…
Now, from a position of calm, the good by far outweighs the bad…
I’ve written 11 songs, and I like ‘em all. I’ve got the right folk around me and we’re going to make a great record. We’ll add in demos, a la “Hidden By The Leaves†as we progress through the early part of 2008 – we look forward to and welcome your comments. We plan to complete the record in April.
Working with The Blue Nile team, we’ll be playing some shows both as a band and with me and my guitar, so hope to sing to you soon.
Then: (the high times at the time of album no. 1 – three years ago)
Fairytale romantics take note: the story of singer-songwriter Gary Hilton is a textbook case study of the headmaster teaches the pupil - who in turn, teaches the headmaster, and (hoorah!) it's a happy ending for all concerned.
To explain: about a decade ago, spurred on by the post-Madchester guitar revival, then-student Gary Hilton decided to form a band called Moses Gate.
One of Gary's very first recruits to the band was a then unknown guitarist by the name of (see where we're heading here?) Damon Gough. To cut to the chase, Gary Hilton was the man who gave Badly Drawn Boy his very first break in the music biz.
"I guess it is a pretty romantic story,'' smiles Gary. "Damon and me were friends before he joined the band. He was a great drinking partner and he could talk about music all day long, he was, and still is, obsessed with Springsteen."
Endured
Moses Gate split up in the mid-90s, and while Gary and Damon went their separate musical ways, their friendship endured strong.
We all know what's happened to Damon Gough since.
And so the headmaster learns from the pupil. And Gary Hilton might just, after 10 long and hard years struggling as an unsigned musician, get his fairytale ending after all.
His band's debut album 'Not Afraid To Be Happy', on the Different Records label, is a record swathed in classic influences - U2, The Smiths, Talk Talk, The Velvet Underground - but it's also a record that displays its Mancunian heart proudly upon its sleeve.
On standout track Perfect Day, Hilton contrive the kind of corrosive, epic atmospherics that make Elbow sound like The Thrills, while the fraught album centrepiece, Killing A Girl, alights on the big responsibilities of parenthood (Gary has a young daughter) within the confines of a five-minute brood-pop masterpiece.
Basically, 'Not Afraid To Be Happy' puts Gary Hilton and his band in that fine tradition of Manc miserabilists who have that special gift of locating poetry in the drab and commonplace and yet never stoop to playing the fey, tortured artist.
Says Gary: "It sometimes sounds cheesy to say it, but you can only write about your take on the world and how it affects you. And when you're a Mancunian, you can sometimes express those things in unique, magical ways".
"It's been a long, long road to make this album, so much has happened in my life since I started playing music with Damon all those years ago. But I'm delighted to get here finally...''
See what we meant by fairytale endings?
Extract taken from an interview with David Sue (MEN October 2004).
