Baxter Dury interview – “I’m not Phil Collins”
We meet Mr Maserati himself
As it turns out, the subject of fathers comes up quite co-incidentally. In our opening exchange of Zoo- time pleasantries, it turns out that our respective dads had both lived in the same block of flats near Hammersmith Bridge, the flat now inhabited by Baxter Dury and his son. What did my dad look like, he asks. “Like me, only with even less hair,” comes the reply – we’re only half joking.
“It’s one thing looking like them,” Baxter says, “another when you start to act like them. I notice it whenever I’m sitting in a taxi, even when there’s a sat nav…” One thing he’s inherited from his father, the rather legendary Ian Dury, is that annoying habit of being convinced he knows a better way to get wherever he’s headed than anyone else.
The similarity between Baxter and his father is unmistakable, especially in terms of his voice, but it’s something he’s neither avoided confronting nor played up. On our previous meeting in a flat near Kensal Rise train station, he said that part of his blank verse, narrative approach to vocals was a deliberate attempt to avoid replicating his dad’s distinctive rhyme-heavy technique.
However, the arrival of Mr Maserati, his Heavenly Records-issued retrospective collection, seems to be the cherry on top a period in which Baxter has escaped the sizeable shadow of his father. Perhaps starting with the widely acclaimed Prince of Tears album in 2017, followed by a collaboration with French house don Etienne de Crecy and Delilah Holliday and then another equally acclaimed last album The Night Chancers, it felt like Baxter had truly – and finally – established himself in his own right.
There has also, of course, been ‘Chaise Longue’, Baxter’s book about his teenage years, which came out in August of this year, answering many questions and in many ways putting the issue to bed once and for all.
There’s certainly a serious difference in Baxter’s relationship with his Hammersmith neighbours, even during the pressure cooker environment of lockdown.
“Everyone in the block expects us to make a noise,” he smiles, “Traditionally we made a huge amount of noise – it’s an improvements on what it was like when my dad lived here and the police would turn up.
“My son and I live here now and we got on fine. I mean, I didn’t love lockdown, it was pretty spooky and shit like that. But it’s a luxurious place to live, we’re on the river. It’s quite Biblical – people come here to do spiritual stuff to do with the water, so during lockdown there were quite a few nutters and quite a lot of weird behaviour going on. But it was all good, I got through it. If you can adapt your agenda to your surroundings.”
Definitely, also, an improvement on the living conditions in ‘Catshit Mansions’, the squat where he sometimes lived with his father and where most of his dad’s big hits were penned. “All I remember is it didn’t have a bathroom, we shared one with three other flats. It was Dickensinan.” Its view, overlooking the Oval Cricket Ground, on the other hand, had its advantages.
“My granny used to perch on the balcony and see the whole thing. I didn’t care about cricket at that age but she used to sit and watch it all day.“
He remembers it being “a rough and tumble place” that was “full of villains”, although in retrospect he thinks it probably wasn’t quite as bad all that. South London has been on his mind recently because as well as working on mew music, there’s a second book in the pipeline too, this time concerning a time in his 20s when returned south, to nearby Vauxhall.
“I used to live there in my 20s as well,” he says, “I lived in an old disused pub – a squatted pub. They gave it to us, I lived there with an actor called Nick Moran (later to star in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. and Harry Potter among others).” Writing the first book, he says, was “a really difficult thing to do – but it shows you it is do-able.
“The biggest lesson is the amount of people who talk about writing books – and I wrote a book. It shows you the bullshitters who are out there. The thing is, you’ve got to stick with the bullshit you spout whether it’s ‘I’m going to write a book’, ‘I’m going to write an album’ or ’I’m going to do synchronized swimming’. You’d better do it.”
Considerably less taxing was the process of choosing the running order of Mr Maserati, or so he says. Did he have any specific criteria?
“I didn’t really have one – it sort of chose itself. Basically it was done by popularity and then I chose the offcuts or whatever the industry word is for them. It took about 13 and a half seconds. It was pretty self-evident what my big tunes were. You know. You know your popular ones. Your monster European smashers. You become fond of your more accessible songs because they’re easier to play. You can have fun with them. Quite obvious really.”
There’s no denying that those “smashers” are here in full effect. ‘Miami’, the anthemic satire of toxic masculinity and capitalist exploitation, sets the tone admirably. Then there’s the perky but melancholic love song ‘Claire’ and the self-examination of ‘Carla’s Got A Boyfriend’ and ‘Other Men’s Girls’. From the grinning ‘Oi’, looking back on a childhood friendship with a dangerous but evidently loveable friend, to the rock bottom regret of ‘Prince of Tears’ and ‘D.O.A.’, it’s a great advert for his versatility and ability to paint a vivid picture with words.
Nevertheless, he balks at the statement, almost unconsciously dropped by this writer into the conversation, that Mr Maserati is a ”best of”, declaring “I’m not Phil – I’m not Phil Collins, so I’m not quite sure it’s a best of. It’s more of a compilation of music. It was a bit of a cynical thing to fill up some space between writing a book and finishing a new album. In a way I shouldn’t really say that but it’s true.”
Was the process of looking back on 20 years and six albums’ worth of music in the cold light of day illuminating, though?
“It’s quite funny – it became pretty obvious that I remain pretty much the same, but there are a few sonic shifts behind me. I don’t have much musical versatility on my own. I’m like a plumber. Although I shouldn’t really say that,. Because plumbers can sound whatever they want to sound like.”
He’s either a little close to the subject or falling prey to modesty, we suspect. His vocal talents are clearly in demand from the other members of the unofficial musical family he’s found himself co-opted into. He guested on the middle section of Fat White Family’s most successful track to date ‘Tastes Good With The Money’, as well as starring in its daft gorefest of a video. “I hear that one all over the place,” he says. “even in places like (luxury shopping centre) Westfield.”
Jason Williamson of Sleaford Mods, meanwhile, who namechecked Baxter as far back as 2009 on the early SM album The Originator, made an appearance on the sublime ‘Almond Milk’ on the Prince of Tears album. All three joined forces at the end of the summer to stage on arguably the most exciting day of the South Facing festival in Crystal Palace.
“It was just a nice release, yeah,” Baxter says of the show, one of the first big events as lockdown finally ended. “It was good, yeah.”
There’s no official alliance between the bands but he acknowledges “There is a sort of blokey, talky thing going on there. Me and Jason are quite straight really, but then we’re older. Then you’ve got the Fat Whites who are rather decadent, but we all know each other pretty well.”
Given the creative and commercial success of their previous collaborations, is it an alliance that will lead to more fruits of cross-fertilisation? Well, Baxter stops short of ruling it out completely, but makes his general position pretty clear. “I think there’s a bit too much remixing and featuring on other people’s records at the moment.”
Well, we can but hope, but in the meantime, we’re more than happy to see what the plumber-like skills of Dury junior himself are capable of coming up with next. We doubt we’ll be disappointed. So, here’s ice in your latte Baxter. All hail Mr Maserati.
Ben Willmott
” Pre-order your vinyl copy of Mr Maserati here or the CD edition here