Chris Hawkins: Now you may remember Guess Roulette earlier this year when I asked who you’d like to guess on the show. And one of the guests the wheel landed on was Matt Hales, Aqualung. And Matt was requested by Jo. And I’m delighted to say that both Matt and Jo are with me this morning. Hello, Matt.

Matt Hales: Good morning.

Chris Hawkins: And hello, Jo.

Jo (me!): Morning.

Chris Hawkins: Matt, am I right in saying that you started Aqualung with your brother and released your self-titled debut album 2002, yeah?

Matt Hales: It was 2002. It wasn’t with my brother. Um, all the previous 20 years of bands were were with my brother. And then, rather pointedly, the one that was successful wasn’t with him, with hilarious results.

Chris Hawkins: “Strange and Beautiful” from that debut album went stratospheric for you. How did all the attention feel after particularly all that had gone before with bands?

Matt Hales:  I mean, I’ve been at it semi-seriously for a decade before that all happened. And I’ve been in a couple of bands. And I’d become sort of prematurely haggard and cynical and actually just started making this kind of quiet music to cheer myself up. Sad music. Thinking, oh, well, even if no one ever hears this stuff, at least I like it. Um, and then so that was actually an incredible lesson that in the end the thing that connected and changed my life was actually the thing that I made like privately for my own reasons. You know, that sort of set me off on a much better path in terms of that.

Chris Hawkins: And “Strange and Beautiful,” I mean, when I say it went stratospheric, it really did, didn’t it?

Matt Hales: Oh, for such a sort of tiny, frail little piece of work. It’s not like it’s machine-tooled for global success. It’s like a tiny, like a sort of baby bird that you find under a bush, you know, has fallen out of its nest, but it it had something about it. I don’t know, when we made it, I was I thought, “Oh, okay. I don’t know what this is, but I think I might sort of love it.” So, yeah, it’s made incredible. I I still can’t believe it. It’s been 20 years of sort of telling this story and it’s still totally nuts that it actually happened.

Chris Hawkins: Do you still love the song?

Matt Hales:  Yeah. Well, that’s the other massive lesson that I find myself telling artists who I work with in my sort of other life as a as a producer and collaborator is, you’ve got to like the, I mean, for God’s sake, don’t make a song you don’t like. Don’t put a song in the world that you don’t care about, because what if it succeeds? And what if you what if you have to sing it for the rest of your life and talk about it and pretend you love it? It’s awful. You know, so much better to write a song you love and only have a few people hear it than to be sort of like chained to a sort of, you know, a turd.

Chris Hawkins: Very wise words. Jo, you wanted to get Matt on the show. So, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to sit back now and let you talk to Matt like you’re sitting in the pub together. Shite if you need anything. Over to you, Jo.

Jo (me!): Thanks, Chris. Hi, Matt.

Matt Hales:  Hello, Jo.

Jo (me!): So, I came to see you play at The Cluny, Newcastle last November. And it had been, I think, almost 20 years, or just over 20 years, actually, since I last saw you play in Manchester. And I don’t know if you remember, but I came up and said hello at the end, because I was wearing the same t-shirt that I wore to that gig in Manchester, on the night in Newcastle.Matt Hales: 

Matt Hales: I do remember. Of course. No, that was so one of the many wonderful things about our little tour. I mean, it was lovely to play the songs and it’s been a long I don’t do that much touring anymore, so it was really great. It was a special thing to do. But most particularly, it was the stories that we’d kind of got told off the shows, people who’d who’d had last seen us play 20 years ago or, you know, were wearing the same t-shirt. It was, it was that’s such a beautiful thought that that your one’s music has been in people’s lives all that time.

Jo (me!): Absolutely. And you did promise me actually that night that it wouldn’t be 20 years till you toured again. So I hope you’re going to stick to that.

Matt Hales: It might be 40 years.

Jo (me!): No, less than 20. You’ve definitely made that promise.

Matt Hales: Did I say less than 20?

Jo (me!): Yes.

Matt Hales: From a legal standpoint, did I definitely say less than? I might have just said a different number from 20.

Jo (me!): Maybe. We’ll see. We’ll argue about that one when I see you next in less than 20 years time. How’s that?

Matt Hales: Oh, no, yeah, all right. Okay. I’ll commit to that.

Jo (me!): So, how has touring changed, Matt, since you last toured? Did you have you found any different?

Matt Hales: I mean, I don’t know if I can speak to touring in general because I’m I’m sort of not been part of it really for such a long time. For me, the difference was, I basically I was like a member of the audience and the artist at the same time. I’d become so inexpert having not really played for years and years, it was like being a kid or something. I was like, I couldn’t believe that that I was on stage. I couldn’t believe that people had come to listen. I was enjoying hearing the songs sung as much as anyone else. I wasn’t practiced, you know, where I used to tour a lot, back in the sort of heyday was doing hundreds of shows a year all over the world and all that stuff. And it’s all very fabulous, but you you it’s difficult to not get a little bit professional about it. Um, and so I was really enjoying being a sort of fumbling idiot again, like in the old days.

Jo (me!): Well, we very much enjoyed you being raw on stage again. It was great.

Matt Hales: Cheers.

Jo (me!): So, just out of interest, who are your musical inspirations? Who who do you listen to, or who’s inspired you in the past, your musical heroes?

Matt Hales: Well, I was sort of raised, I was literally kind of grown in a soup of The Beach Boys. My mom’s favorite record was “Pet Sounds.” And when she was growing me, she wanted me to know about it, so she would play it to me often when I was inside. And so I feel that basically I was kind of told before I was born that I should make music a bit like “Pet Sounds.” And so I sort of probably have spent my career pursuing that with never obviously getting anywhere near. So, I think I’m I’m sort of 99% “Pet Sounds” and 1% Toto.

Jo (me!): That’s a good mix.

Matt Hales: Well.

Jo (me!): Okay. So you just said that obviously your mum kind of inspired you by introducing you to music very early on. But what would you be doing if you weren’t doing music, do you think?

Matt Hales: That’s easy. I’d be a stuntman.

Jo (me!):  Really?

Matt Hales:  Yeah. That was what I wanted to do when I was younger. And then I kind of got into music by default when I was very young. And then when I thought, what do I actually want? I thought, what I want to be is a stuntman, inspired by the TV series The Fall Guy. And so I would spend my time collecting old mattresses from jumble sales and then arranging with my parents to go out so that I could be allowed to jump off the house.

Jo (me!): Is that true?

Matt Hales: Yes, it is true.

Jo (me!): You jumped off the house?

Matt Hales: Always. I’d spend all my time jumping off things, jumping off the garage, falling off the garage, jumping off the house, and setting up elaborate stunts on my skateboard. I I had this fantasy that a kind of stunt A&R person would walk past my house and go, that kid looks just like the kind of stunt boy we’ve been looking for. And I would go and be like the young Harrison Ford in a in a stunt as a stunt double. That was my actual dream. And music was like, I guess if the stunt thing doesn’t work out, I can do music.

Jo (me!): So one, probably one last question from me, really. I’ve quite recently got into creative writing and I find inspiration comes from all over the place now. I’ve opened my eyes to it, really. So, do you find there’s a particular places where you find your inspiration when you’re writing your music? So obviously you’re writing for a lot of other people and collaborating with them. So where do you get your inspiration from?

Matt Hales: It does depend on the sort of task. I mean, if I’m working with someone else, then the job is principally to support them in what they want to say. There’s always something to say. Music, I find is easy. Music is always there for me. If I want to look in the kind of music box, there’s always some music in there. The bigger question is what to say. And that’s normally about, when I work with other artists, I say it’s about talking and having tea and trying to find out what it is something truthful that we could look at, help them express themselves in a way that feels right to them. But when I write for my own stuff, it tends to be retrospective. I can’t really write in the moment of things for my own music. I’ve worked out over time it’s about a three-year lag. Um, but I just tend to accumulate, it’s like there’s a sort of a a vault of thoughts and feelings and impressions and and scraps that builds up slowly over time. When it hits a certain threshold, a little sort of bell goes off, and then it’s time for me to kind of look in there and see what it is I have to say.

Jo (me!): Do you carry a little book around with ideas or anything, or do you just keep them in your head?

Matt Hales: Well, when it’s when it’s literal lyrics and things, I do write them down. Yeah, I write down anything interesting that that catches my eye, certain words just have such such a lot, like I’m just looking at it now, the list. Like, I mean, I’ll also just have a on an ongoing pointless joke with my son about writing sort of pretend wisdom. Um, so so there like, for example, I wrote there’s no point wishing we had because we didn’t. That’s pretend wisdom. But I just like, I wrote down the word celestial. That’s a word that I’ll come back to. I wrote down maximum pause. I wrote down I would, if I did. So these things, you never know, some of those phrases might have happy endings are optional. You know, your thumb opens my phone. I just write down things as they come and I don’t think about it too much. And then they go in the pot and they kind of marinate, I suppose, for a long time. And I just really respond to when it’s kind of ready. When it’s cooked, I look in the pot.

Jo (me!): So do you think there’s going to be enough cooked for maybe another tour, perhaps later this year or next year, maybe?

Matt Hales: I’d say within between one and 40 years. One and 40 years. I think I can commit to that.

Jo (me!): Okay. So if I’m still on my my own two feet by then, I’ll definitely come and see you again. And if I’m not, I’ll still come and see you anyway.

Chris Hawkins: Great. love it. Jo, that was superb. Thank you so much.

Jo (me!): Thank you.

Chris Hawkins: And Matt, is there going to be any new material, if not a tour?

Matt Hales: There’s a thing in the works. I’ve got an idea to do something with some sort of musical friends, old and new, kind of Matt and friends duet type project. So we’ll see where that goes, but that could be a fun way to pass the time.

Chris Hawkins: Sounds good. Thank you so much, Jo in Barnard Castle and Matt Hales, Aqualung. Thank you, both.

Matt Hales: Thank you.

Jo (me!): Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Matt.

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