and i shared a pavlova with phil collins no but did you talk to him about you know how
much his music has influenced you i certainly did and he and he signed up a load of albums
from his sister becky he was an absolute charming man and it was a charming pavlova
welcome to a super special edition of through the decades on absolute radio my name is jay lawrence
i'm joined by special guests who've chosen every single one of the songs we're going to play elbow
guy pete thank you so much for joining me tonight see you um now how was it sifting
through the last 60 years and picking your favorite songs it was hell hello
as we always do we start with absolute radio 60s you chose the velvet underground
uh for your absolute radio 60s choice pete do you remember you know how you first you
know heard them do you remember when you first heard them what it was like listening to them
i probably first heard them with that um advert was it pirelli i don't remember it was in it was
a it was kind of like quite bondagey yeah venus in first phoenix it was yeah and and i remember
just being blown away by it yeah and so i kind of got and then it was probably probably around
meeting you garf yeah when i when i met the lads we were 16 we'd like we it was the the end of the
summer after leaving school i think or maybe the following year but i remember being a house party
at ange duddy's house do you remember ange wp yeah um i was at a party at her house because
her parents had gone away and we'd been up all night and i mean that in itself was just
huge that i wasn't i didn't have to go home and i'd been awake all night and there
was just these amazing exotic sort of goth girls um who i was too timid to talk to um
and then in the morning the velvet underground banana album uh went on the andy warhol one
and i couldn't believe what i was hearing it was it was like it was it was something other than
music it was just amazing representing absolute radio 60s as we go through the decades it's
velvet underground i'm waiting for the man as chosen by my special guest tonight elbow
that means that we're going into the 70s uh next i'm actually very different i think from
the velvet underground but a bandit you know you can't ignore when you're talking about the 70s
how much or do you think that genesis have influenced the band at all um hugely um via me
um and it's kind of uh it's because my eldest uh my the youngest of my five older sisters becky
used to play me genesis um and uh their sort of early work with peter gabriel followed by the
couple of albums after that with phil collins singing uh there's magical qualities to them
there's lots of mythical beasts and stories about far away lambs and she remembers becky remembers
an album coming out and and the tagline was the great storytellers returned and genesis were my
nursery rhymes um and early doors with with elbow when we were playing each other the music that we
loved and it was one i was really pleased that the lads connected with um because when you start and
you don't really know how to play your instruments and you're wondering what kind of sounds you could
make um during that that initial period of exploration we got into all kinds of things
and genesis was one of them uh the first song of ours that did anything on radio was called newborn
on our first album and it was it was based almost on a blueprint of a genesis song called then tango
and then i was on um i was on a weekend breakfast program you know when you have food in cocktails
with all the famous people before you work and i shared a pavlova with phil collins
did you talk to him about you know how much how much um you know his music has influenced you i
certainly did and he and he signed up a load of albums from his sister becky he was an absolute
charming man and it was a charming pavlova did it well he didn't make the pavlova eyes too um why
in particular this song though follow you follow me that song is it's one of the one of the early
ones that guy played with that that i really loved it's just a very cool song it's very 70s isn't it
well from absolutely radio 70s uh this is genesis follow you follow me as chosen by elbow
talk to me about the cure then because that's you know you chosen for absolute 80s and you know can
you what sort of effect um you know did the cure listening to bands like the cure sort of you know
have on youtube for me it was the the things that everybody was listening to and i'd heard of
and i didn't know anything of it and then was introduced to it and sort of
realized how amazing they were and and the him as a wordsmith actually for me it was a big one
um and you probably you probably were into him before i was p through your sisters right yeah i
love disintegration but the thing about lullabies it's one of those really special songs that comes
along that doesn't sound like anything else it was a similar thing with fool's gold wasn't it yeah
it was just like what the [ __ ] is this this is amazing nothing sounds like that yeah i love that
i love the way that the cure and the cure the way that they just unapologetically do what they want
we were lucky enough to play with them yeah they they support them yeah well at old trafford
yeah it's like it's called move and we played with them and there was they were absolutely
astonishing well here we go representing absolute 80s as chosen by elbow it's the cure
uh now uh a guy pete you know tell me about talk to me about rem talk to me about
you know specifically i suppose automatic for the people it's it's an album that of course so many
people love from the 90s the album as well you know still holds up automatic for the people's
my favorite of theirs and drag is my favorite song and automatic's a um an album that we've
always wanted to make something like it it had such strong signals but it's it's pretty dark um
it's it's just it's it's great album i mean we kind of like we we first met guys through
loving ren oh yeah yeah guys i've forgotten that actually yeah of course so p um so mark potter
who's whose band elbow is it was his idea in the first place uh he's the guitarist in the band
we went to the same sixth form college and he'd heard me singing in the common room uh with a
guy called alan hibbert who was a palaman we used to write insulting songs about our
college friends we'd write them in the morning and performing in the afternoon or a pair of bastards
but potter'd heard me singing and previous to that there was a skirmish between the two of our friend
a friend of mine and a friend of potts and we'd been on other sides of a bit of a dining stand
off you know and and eyeballed each other i mean in retrospect we we both know now that pop would
marmalize me with one hand behind his back um but then he heard me sing and then he was driving
omani's dad's sky blue volkswagen beetle and he stopped and offered me a lift and i was like oh
that's the guy that i had the eyeball thing with but okay cool so got in we're driving along and
losing my religion came on uh on he had a cassette um and i sang a harmony and he said i've got a
band that i formed at school do you want to sing and i was like yeah when are you rehearsing so he
says sunday i'll pick you up so i say cool what time so he said 11 o'clock i was like yeah cool
completely forgot i've joined about six bands with people who and it just hadn't materialized nothing
had happened but he turned up and he picked me up and that's that was our first rehearsal
well you know next we move to absolute radio naughties um now you you chose you chose doves now
do you guys have much of a relationship with the band do you know what's really weird
uh did you see me look over here just then that was jimmy from dubs phoning me
really yeah so so there you go so that's a yes then yeah yeah um yeah they're like um
one of our sister bands they're well actually i i described them as like a an older sibling they
took us on our first uk tour they took us on our first us tour and we sang on each other's records
uh i co-wrote the lyrics on jimmy's solo album and we're really good friends really good that
was yeah it's like those early days were really exciting it was um they were like a couple of
years ahead of us weren't they and we could we could see what was happening with them we could
see that they were you know i mean they were just hitting it they were brilliant and yeah
for themselves people loved their music we had a cassette of lost souls before it actually came out
didn't we through our manager and and it was just amazing it was just watching watching everything
happen for them and then they took us with them and it was great it was really good fun well this
is a fantastic song though isn't it from dubs there goes the fear yeah i i i think i'm singing
on this but i can't quite remember no i'm singing up there oh is it you no it's p i think it's me
well uh i don't know what kind of world do you live in where you don't know if you're singing
on dubs there goes the fear you must be sick it's a it's an incredible thing it's incredible
i know i have some on it because i i remember doing it live at a manchester arena charity
gig that both bands did but i can't remember if i just did that or if i'm on the recording
no i'm on the recording i'm on this it's an amazing song uh particularly for the
backing vocals it's doves there goes the fear representing absolute radio naughties
so we're gonna move to absolute radio 10s next so many bands um that you could have chosen so many
that i'm sure you've got on tour with that you know uh pete you chose the arctic monkeys talk
to me about the arctic monkeys i think they get better and better i think that it's the similar
thing with radio edge i always find that they get better and better and they kind of move on
but i mean when i first heard this song i'd heard it on the radio a few times and it was just
straight away it's kind of got the slight dark sexy vibe that queens of the stone age have um you
can probably imagine that josh kind of influenced it from working with earlier on i suppose but i
remember watching them and being so chuffed that when the headline glastonbury that started with
it i just thought that's it's a bold move yeah you know but it's such a it's probably one of
one of their best songs i think yeah i i agree with pete they get better and better and al's
an amazing lyricist and and they're nate they're a bunch of friends uh and i think that's a real
band here we go for absolute radio tens as chosen by elbow it's arctic monkeys do i want to know
one more song to talk about it just so happens to be by you guys
just as an fyi we're going to be playing six words so tomorrow you release your new record
flying dream one but before then i'm going to get really self-involved and talk very very quickly
about myself the other day i was walking my in-laws dog around this really picturesque
field near their house you know it was misty it was it was damp i i was lucky enough to have your
new album in my headphones and you know as you can imagine over the last two years you know 18 months
there's probably been less and less moments of calmness of tranquility and and think that
that was one of those moments that you saw you realize at the time how you feel it really this
record i think really conveys that feeling of um contentment was that intentional at all while we
were writing these songs we were all in our homes with our families and yeah so there's an awful lot
of uh stuff about childhood on the record there's also sort of wisdom romance and nostalgia but it's
also crucial cutting age uh a good cutting age is that a phrase it is now put the cutting age uh um
art we bought we were jazz aesthetic but hey hang on a minute there's some soul in there
and then of course lyrics well i mean what can i say about lyrics
uh it was really good fun to put together it was dictated to by what instruments we had
at home but then they're getting together in brighton theatre royal while it was unable to open
we hired that place for two weeks to finish the album and you can hear how happy we were to see
each other and how much wine we drank and it was a gentle lovely beautiful time to make this record
with the old pals and all the imagery in six words um his images of north manchester of press switch
it says weary kids in bottle green same gate as the ancient scholars that's my old school uniform
whenever i see kids coming home from school looking tired i think
not long now life begins when you get out of that door mindset
thank you so much for joining me guy p it's been an absolute pleasure uh having you today
well flying dream one is out tomorrow at the new album from elbow beautiful it's a it's a layered
triumph i would say guys it is um it's a really incredible aj what go on it's a layered trifle
it's a layered trifle flying dream one out tomorrow thank you so much guys cheers