"I gave up songwriting, as a job, in about 1999. I just decided I didn't want to be a factory hand, someone who went to the piano so he could have enough songs to make
an album that year and fulfil his option with a record company."
This approach to his craft may explain the relatively low level
of productivity from Buxton-born
and Massachussetts-based Lloyd Cole over the past ten years.
The singer-songwriter is returning
to the road this month with a solo acoustic tour after an enforced lay-off due to knee surgery.
He released his last album of new
studio material, Antidepressant, in 2006, although a clearing of the BBC archives saw three volumes of radio sessions hit record shop stands last year.
The first two volumes were with his band The Commotions, which Cole formed in 1982 while at the University of Glasgow studying philosophy.
They made their name with 1984 debut album Rattlesnakes. Songs such as Perfect Skin, Forest Fire and the
title track helped establish Cole's
reputation for literate and intelligent lyrics, referencing the likes of Simone de Beauvoir, Norman Mailer and
screen icon Eva Marie Saint.
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Cole broke up the band in 1989
to embark on a solo career that would
take him to New York to work
with former Voidoids and Lou Reed
guitarist Robert Quine, and move between different styles, from pop,
to psychedelia, to folk-rock.
"It was probably around the
mid-1990s when I fell into that scenario a lot of musicians fall into," he says. "The record company gives you money. You have to be creative. And somehow you are. By about
1998 I realised I did not like that
relationship. I didn't like the idea
that I would have to switch
on or I wouldn't get paid.
"I certainly made a lot of records
in the 1990s, because I had to. It was
my job. I don't feel like I need to be
creative any more. I've been creative enough. If something strikes me I'll
follow it but I'm not going to feel bad
if I don't write a song for a month."
Despite the drop in productivity, 2001's album The Negative, 2003's Music In A Foreign Language, and
his latest, Antidepressant, were all
greeted with positive reviews.
This tour will see Cole re-engage with the recording industry, with the UK and Ireland jaunt concluding with
a live album recording in Dublin over the course of three days.
The newer songs are understandably more mature, as married-man
Cole finds himself dealing with
more adult issues.
"All grown-up people have to deal with depression," he says. "All married people have to deal with marital
difficulties. Getting through, dealing with middle-age and finding ways
to make your life rich and beautiful becomes the challenge.
"To not become a cynic or
a curmudgeon, that's the greatest
challenge at the time of life I'm at right now. That's probably what I'm trying to do with these songs - to meet those difficulties and overcome them."
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