Not So Badly Drawn
It's hard to square the idea of Damon Gough addressing the Oxford Union. Richard Nixon, Mother Teresa and even Chesney Hawkes I can deal with, but Badly Drawn Boy is somehow beyond my comprehension. He's the antithesis of the institution and everything it represents.
A louche, unkempt, informal, foul mouthed northerner, Gough is uninterested in debate and doesn't quite turn up in black tie. Tonight he's sporting his trademark red Adidas T-shirt, dark jacket and trousers, and red beanie hat.
About as unstarry as they come, he walks over and introduces himself. We chat over a beer as he shifts from foot to foot, nervously sipping and confessing he's petrified of the speech he's about to give opposing the motion that reality TV is killing real music. Motor-mouth Pop Idol judge 'Dr' Neil Fox, whose head just about fits through the debating chamber door, is on his team, as is Miranda Sawyer, award-winning music wordsmith and one of the finest journalists in Britain today. Expectations that Sawyer and Fox's speeches would win the day are dashed by Gough's personal, honest and conversational style of address, which receives the largest cheer of the night.
"I'm going to keep my contribution short, I'm dying to have a cigarette," he confesses at one point.
He speaks about the worlds of manufactured music and 'real' music, and his lack of worry that the likes of Will Young, Britney and Blue will infringe on the particular crevice of the music market to which his style of music belongs.
"The two worlds can exist together and they never need to cross. Real music will always prevail," he argues.
Ironically for an alternative artist such as Gough, it was popular film which propelled him to true fame.
His work on the soundtrack to About A Boy made mainstream music purchasers sit up and take notice, and the album was his biggest-selling so far.
This success added to his previously substantial following - Gough won the Mercury Music Prize in 2000 for his eagerly anticipated first album, The Hour of Bewilderbeast. His previous EPs are rare, and his first EP, EP1 (about as originally titled as this newspaper) sells for £150 if you're lucky enough to have one in your collection.
Gough's sound has a distinct lo-fi quality and features repetitive guitar melodies, strong percussion and Gough's clear, sincere and sometimes haunting vocals. You get the sense that every song is personal to him, with some sort of autobiographical link somewhere along the way.
He's certainly had enough time to formulate the concept of his music, working in his family's printing firm and in music studios until releasing EP1 at the age of 28.
But who is Badly Drawn Boy, and how does he compare to Damon Gough?
"I wasn't confident to be Damon Gough, I mean it doesn't sound like Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen does it? People ask me if I will release music under my own name, but Badly Drawn Boy is with me now."
It's a name and a brand which has worked. Releasing his music through Twisted Nerve, the label he co-owns, has brought Gough commercial success too.
He's joined Fatboy Slim and Craig David as a British artist who's had commercial success through an independent record label. Despite a slump in music sales these labels have had disproportionate success over the past few years. In 2002, independent record labels had 21 per cent of the album market, and 38.5 per cent of the platinum (300,000 plus) sales.
But what of Badly Drawn Boy's own albums? His follow up to About A Boy, titled Have You Fed The Fish?, received very mixed reviews.
"With Fed the Fish I was just trying to fit everything in. I was like a kid in a sweet shop," Gough tells me.
He gets animated and passionate when talking about his new album, One Plus One Is One, which is released next month.
"One Plus One is One is an album and is being released as an album. I'm only releasing one single off it, and that will be after the album comes out. I never want to compromise on what I want to do, I would never release anything I'm not very, very proud of."
The new album, which The Oxford Student has obtained an exclusive copy of, is undoubtedly a return to form. Gough is firing on all cylinders; from the eccentricity of Year of the Rat to the haunting melody of This Is That New Song, with this one he's cracked it. It's a truly brilliant work, the mark of the man with the sense and talent to make cutting-edge music. It's got the creativity and versatility of Bob Dylan mixed with the emotional resonance of the songs of Joni Mitchell.
Of his unkempt image, Gough says it is simply him. He's notorious for this of course, as well as his on-stage drinking at concerts, playing incomplete material and forgetting the words of some of his songs.
However, one formerly key aspect of his image was ripped away from him - his stripy beany hat.
He put it up at an auction in aid of a charity which helps landmine victims. The bidding started and he put in a bid to get the ball rolling. Then he decided he wanted it back. He eventually paid £1,500 to buy back his own hat!
Ironic, then, that only a few months later the hat was stolen from his head in a crowded bar.
"These guys just came up to me and took it off. I was quite pissed off about it. It's a bit annoying really," he recalls.
A few glasses of red wine later and I leave Gough to his friends from the music industry who have come along to support him tonight.
There's a certain satisfaction apparent on his face. Perhaps he is musing at being the only person in the Union's 181-year history to choose the opening sentence: "I'll start by saying that I don't really care about any of this shit."
Miranda Sawyer said Badly Drawn Boy had his "brilliant music brought to the world's attention by a Hugh Grant film."
Of course this is true, but if the juggernaut of the film industry brings Badly Drawn Boy to an even wider audience, then that can't be a bad thing.
13th May 2004