Stephen Fretwell Interview

• 1st Jun 2007

I am ten minutes late. I’m convinced, on the day after the Champions League final, of all the vehicles stranded like children’s toys around the tight streets outside the Liverpool’s Barfly, one particularly aggrieved traffic warden will stumble upon my car at ten minutes to six without a ticket; I was not alone. The man trying to squeeze a well-travelled removals van onto a street corner half its size was Stephen Fretwell’s tour manager.

I rang a friend who was drinking nearby, oiling himself internally in preparation for seeing his idol perform tracks from a new EP later that evening. ‘Bring spare change for the meter if you can,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you a pound if you let me sit in on the interview,’ he replied. Although the tour manager thought it was a fair trade, Fretwell gave the impression I could have brought along a small army and he would have remained as unpretentious, affable and entertaining as he undoubtedly was.

A sensational debut album and a voice that would render any heart breakable are two of an abundance of justifiable excuses he could use for developing egoism, yet he was content, almost appreciative, to share coffee, time and anecdote after anecdote with a pair of strangers. Whether commenting that its “Blonde on Blonde’s filthy sleaziness that captured the zeitgeist of 66”, recounting surreal drink-fuelled incidents on nights out with Shane MacGowan or deliberating how many times close friends crudely edited his entry on the Wikipedia website, Stephen Fretwell shattered every cynical stereotype that could be levelled at a successful musician.

It’s endearing to notice the honesty of Fretwell’s music is reflected in his realistic, pragmatic outlook. Bands and performers he has already mentioned aspiring to in the Manchester music scene of the 90s, resurface in conversation.

“I was trying to be like Guy Garvey, Johnny Bramwell (I am Kloot), Alfie, Brian Glancy and Badly Drawn Boy. I just wanted to write weird, peculiar songs when I started. Singer-songwriter meant something different back then than is does now”.

Irritated, rather than incensed, by comparisons with Damian Rice, James Morrison, Daniel Powter and the current throng of singer-songwriters, Fretwell recalled once being, somewhat provocatively, asked: ‘what it felt like to not be as good as James Blunt?’

“I said, ‘it felt beautiful.’’

His response to rumours linking the artist to a Pussycat Doll was just as playful:

“Fucking hell, I went on a date with a Pussycat Doll!”

“Which one?” I interjected.

“I’m not telling you!” he joked, eyes lighting up and leaning back on the battered leather sofa of a bar two minutes away from the venue. “He copies everything I do, that guy. He ain’t got a belly yet, or bad teeth; he’ll probably get them next album he does.”

He recalls the bar from a previous time in the city promoting the single New York, from his groundbreaking album Magpie; remembering enjoying both the drinks and the anonymity that night: ‘Because I’d started on my own, when I was given money for the next tour I was able to hire musicians. To begin with I really wanted to play with the band, but now I’m getting more excited about playing just on my own again.”

Having supported Oasis, Keane and KT Tunstall, Fretwell then experienced the dramatic highs of headlining to capacity audiences half sold on radio play and reputation before he’d even stepped foot on stage. Inevitably, it was the trappings of such success and exposure that made him reconsider his approach to recording and performing.

“This tour has been the favourite one I’ve ever done. Playing songs no one has heard of and thinking ‘shit, what’s going to happen here?’ or ‘if they hate it, are they just going to want to hear Run or Emily’ I wrote Emily when I was eighteen. I’m twenty-six now. Twenty-five? Yeah, twenty-five. I suppose I’m trying to rediscover my roots, playing alone in more intimate places again.”

Although his second album, Man On The Roof, a name drawn from the concept in western films that there’s always a figure on an adjacent building ready to shoot or be shot at, was recorded in America, Fretwell describes its “avant-garde” sound as being “more British than the first one”. Positive reviews upon his current EP, Four-Letter Words, appear to have left him cautious rather than confident.

“I’m a bit anxious about it. Real harsh critics have been really into it but we only made three thousand copies of it. I thought they’d like the album and rip the EP to pieces; now I’m worried if it’s going to be the other way around.”

“I acetated the album on vinyl in the recording studio where it was mastered, so I’m going to try and not play it. When I’m working in Tesco and my kid thinks I’m a loser, I’ll be able to say, ‘look I was alright once.” His pride in Man On The Roof is almost palpable. Fretwell doesn’t just wear his heart on his sleeve; he places it on the table in front of you, delicate and vulnerable.

His performance that night shared similar qualities to his conversation, it was fragile and ethereal in moments, captivating throughout.

www.stephenfretwell.com