*Stephen Fretwell Interview

Interview with Stephen Fretwell (Oct 20th 2007)

Born in the town of Scunthorpe in 1982, English singer/songwriter Stephen Fretwell was introduced to the music of Bob Dylan at a young age. Using a borrowed guitar from his grandparents, the young artist began writing his own songs and made tapes for his family and friends. After an aborted attempt at university life - he lasted two days - Fretwell relocated to Manchester, where his clear northern voice, poetic lyrics, and melodic guitar work soon won him an audience. After a critically acclaimed first album, “Magpie”, his second release, “Man on the roof” sent him back out on tour around the UK.

I sat down with him shortly before a homecoming gig at Manchester Academy;

LG: Did you always want to be a musician?

SF: Yeah I think so, I think I wanted to be a train driver for a bit and then I wanted to be a musician.

LG: When I was little I wanted to be an acrobat.

SF: Really? That’s pretty cool.

LG: Then I grew up and had more sense, realised I’m not a gymnast.

LG: How nerve-wracking is it as an artist recording a follow up album to a well-received first album? (Magpie)

SF: I don’t know, I think for me it wasn’t a problem at all because I didn’t have any kind of huge success with my first album. Not a success on a scale of other bands or artists who sell millions and millions of records and then have to follow that up. I mean I have a healthy amount of success so recording this one was kind of easy. I’d have sooner had loads of money and had a difficult album to follow up. Don’t get me wrong! But yeah there was no pressure really for me because if anything I set out to be like Elliott Smith, that’s always what I wanted to be and then as soon as I started making music everyone else must have got the same idea because all of a sudden there were loads of singer songwriters around!

LG: There has been a massive burst in the last few years. It’s unfortunate that some of the male singer/songwriters who get famous …it doesn’t seem like it’s about really good song writing.

SF: It’s about making dinner party music isn’t it? The thing is, the people who like my music are the kind of people who download it for free off the Internet. Do you know what I mean? Because there’s too many people at the gigs, (laughing) if all those people at the gig… there’s too many people here for the amount of records I’ve sold! But people who are into good music do that though, those people don’t buy 6 cds a year in Asda.

LG: The Internet has changed everything, the whole Radiohead new album, being able to pay whatever you want for it…

SF: Yeah that’s a really good idea, if you’re on a major record label you only get like, 95p per cd for yourself so why not get it all yourself, if someone gives you £2 for your album you’ve already doubled your money! I mean it’s not as black and white as that i'm sure, but you know…

LG: Did you feel like the success of “Magpie” came to you at the right time? Or were there points where you felt like giving up?

SF: Well I always made money, from when I was about 20 I signed a publishing deal so I kind of sold the rights to my songs and ended up getting quite a decent salary. You know, nothing stupid, but enough to not work. So I kind of spent my whole time bumming around until the money had run out and then I’d try and sell another few songs. That was quite fun for a while and then around 24 was when “Magpie” came out and when that came out suddenly there was loads of work to do! So I did all that and was kind of struggling here and there but I’ve never been a struggling musician really.

LG: Have you ever written for anyone else?

SF: I tried to yeah, i've been given loads of briefs and I’ve tried to do a lot of them because I wanted the money but to write for somebody else, where you don’t actually care about what you’re saying… I could never do it and I think that’s because I don’t want to do it. Even if I give it the big guns “Oh I want the money” I think deep down I just couldn’t do it.

LG: It does take the personal element out of the song writing.

SF: Totally yeah

LG: Where did the name “Man on the roof” for the new record come from?

SF: A friend of mine, called Justin Farry, he worked in Toronto for a year and when I was in New York I’d get this 12 hour train up to Toronto, you know, to see him for a couple of nights while I wasn’t recording. One time I was just writing my finished lyrics on one of the train rides and I got there and was like “Look the label want a title and I’ve got no idea what to use for a title” He said, “Oh you should call it man on the roof, my dad always used to wear a bracelet that said man on the roof because he was a massive cowboy fan and in cowboy films there would always be a man on the roof who shoots people down and he’d always be the last man to get shot.”
I love it when nasty journalists ask me “So Stephen I suppose you’re saying with man on the roof that you’re going to be around for a long time, and that you’re really high up in your own estimations” I love that one, I love telling the story and then they all just go, “Oh yeah right, whatever.”

LG: I love when they ask questions and they don’t really listen to your answer!

SF: Some guy asked me before, he said, “Oh yeah I saw you at the Ritz for your homecoming gig, I was there, now did you play on your own or did you play it with a band?” And I thought well you were there mate; do you know what I mean? I played the show with a band and had made it a bit heavy by then, and yeah that just freaked me out, he just made me think you don’t know anything about me. But its better when people are just honest, tell you they don’t know much about you but it’s their job to find out.

LG: What made you record the new record in New York? As opposed to London like the first one or doing it in Manchester?

SF: Well I did a tour with Feist up and down the west coast of America but that was my last promotional duty for “Magpie” and when that ended it ended in Toronto. I met up with my mate and got a plane down to New York and just bummed around there for a bit. I’d never been and just really wanted to hang around there. So I was there for a week or two and just didn’t come back. I didn’t speak to the label for a bit because I’d finished the work and then when it came time to thinking about making a new album I said, “Well I don’t really want to come home, I feel like I live here now.” Then I met this producer who made the album over there and I just did it, it was all just pretty natural, felt like a natural thing to do. (Laughing) Although having said that I do hate when bands go over to America to do their second album, I just hate them, because it’s just like, “Oooh we went over to America.”

LG: There’s something about New York though, I lived there for 6 months and there’s just something about it that makes you want to be productive and creative.

SF: Yeah totally, I don’t know why. But I know what you mean, you just don’t have that feel over here. But that’s why we make the music that we do and why they make the music that they do I think. You’d never get The Smiths coming out of there; I can just imagine Morrissey being brought up in the Bronx. That would be pretty cool.

LG: I’m not sure how he would have turned out... gold hoop earrings maybe…

SF: (Laughing) yeah yeah, gold hoop earrings

LG: What’s your favourite song from the new record? And do you feel that fan favourites often match up with artist favourites?

SF: It’s always the weirdest ones for me I suppose, with the weirdest sounds to them. But favourite song off this record would probably be a song called “She” partly because it’s got a real massive production sound to it, it just sounds like someone like me shouldn’t really be doing it. I like stuff like that. But the fan thing, they’re stupidly loving the new songs which surprises me, like when I play old songs, the reaction, its just the same for the new songs and I thought that they might be a little bit cold with the new stuff. Saying that tonight is Manchester so they might be booing everything.

LG: No! It’s homecoming for you, surely not?

SF: That’s why they’ll boo me! That’s the problem

LG: They’ll be too critical of the hometown boy?

SF: Exactly!

LG: Have you toured much in the states?

SF: No, the only tour I’ve done there was the one with Leslie (Feist) that was fun, I’d love to go and tour America properly. Elbow asked me to come with them, but I turned it down because I’d just started doing the new album and I wish I’d taken them up on that really, because I would have just been on their bus with them, opening up for them.

LG: Your website says you have “A stock of anecdotes about former boy-band members”… care to share?

SF: Oh that’s because I told a journalist about Mark Owen coming to one of my gigs and I met up with him afterwards and he was a really lovely lovely guy. And I always tell everybody "Mark Owen - he’s a right dude” and they’re all like, “Shut up! It’s Mark Owen!” But I will stand by the fact that he’s a lovely, lovely man.

LG: What’s the connection with Smashing Pumpkins and their studio for this album?

SF: James from Smashing Pumpkins owns a studio and anyone can rent it, and I recorded in that. He actually plays a little bit on the album because he was there all the time and he wanted to do something so… I love stuff like that. Just random. Two members of Elbow are my backing band for this tour, that’s pretty weird when you’ve got your heroes, people you look up to, backing you up. And they’re like, “We’ll do it for you, sure!” I just talked them into it while they were drunk one night!

LG: There’s a recurring theme of “Meeting a girl and getting cheered up by her” in your music, do you find it easier to write about love etc. or more melancholy matters?

SF: I don’t know, I never know, honestly, what i'm writing about. There’ll be about ten minutes where ill be writing something and I wont know what’s going on and ill look back and it will just be there. But if I was writing a song for someone else, the easiest thing to write about would probably be love, I like you, you don’t like me, I’m going to cry, sit in my room dah dah dah.

LG: You worked at night and day café here in Manchester once upon a time didn’t you?

SF: Yeah! Did you see that on my myspace? They won’t put stuff like that on my official one. Yeah I used to live across the road from it, that’s where I first started doing music - pop by there every day, used to work the door, the owner wouldn’t let lads work behind the bar because he only wanted sexy women so he wouldn’t give me that job but he was like, “I tell you what Stephen, ill let you take the money on the door”. That was a great period of my life. Oldham street used to be a lot rougher but still had that edge and that’s where I met all the Elbow lads and the Kloot lads, they were all just getting their deals and putting their first albums out. They were helping me out with my music so it was a great period. I don’t go so much anymore because I live out in Chorlton now but i'm going to try and move back in to town because it’s a bit sleepy out there. One of my old mates says that’s where musicians go to die. And that I should move back to the city center!

LG: What are some of the biggest perks of being a musician and making a living this way?

SF: The biggest perks… hmm, probably the amount of beer that you get given at gigs because if you had to pay for the amount of alcohol that you consume you’d be spending a lot of money! The other thing is not having to get a proper job and not having to shovel shit for anybody. Things like that.

LG: Any down sides?

SF: There will be in a year when I’ve been promoting this for a year! But at the moment, I mean, without being schmaltzy or whatever, it’s a pleasure to talk to some people – like yourself, and awful talking to other people, because they’re just out to get you and I don’t see the reason why! I mean, because they’ll never get me (laughing) I’ll just outdo them with sickness. Just start talking about sick things and see how they like that.

LG: What for you, personally, have been the biggest highlights of the last couple years?

SF: (Laughing) Sleeping more, between the albums. I don’t know, it’s a funny one really. I’m very worried about tonight, I’m very nervous because it’s Manchester and I hope it goes really well. So, fingers crossed when I walk away tonight this will be a highlight. Someone will probably throw a bottle at me or something!

LG: I hope not!

SF: Some of my mates will probably throw them!

LG: Finally… what are some of your finest memories of being a student?

SF: A student...? Oh you see I was never a student… I did behave like a student but I never really was one. My best memory of “being” a student, was every Wednesday night there used to be a venue called “The Venue”…

LG: It’s still there!

SF: Is it downstairs? Yeah! Well my best memory was; there used to be a really cheesy club called “Infinity” across from the central library and it used to have a free bar between 7 and 9. You had to pay 5 quid to get in. Of course the club hoped that if you went in at 7 you’d use the free bar for an hour or two and then stay in there for the rest of the night and buy drinks. But the best thing was all my mates and I would go there, and just neck drinks for five quid for like an hour and then fall around the street for an hour, finally ending up at The Venue where it was 50p a bottle and 50p a shot and just doing that every Thursday... that’s my favourite student memory! I remember finding myself sat outside the hacienda, at 8 in the morning; I just woke up not knowing what had happened since 8pm the previous night. But I think i've learned how to drink a bit better now…

LG: Well, thank you very much for taking the time to talk and ill be at the show later.

SF: Are you coming? Ah nice one!

LG: I wont throw a bottle at you though.

SF: Alright, wicked!