Ian Brodie: Three Lions was misunderstood

There was a time when Ian Brodie feared his career with The Lightning Seeds would end before it had even begun. It was 1989, and his debut single “Pure” – a song Brody recorded largely by himself in his bedroom and of which only 300 copies were sold – was set to be played by influential Radio 1 DJ Steve Wright.

As the song began, Brody eagerly sat down next to the radio. Wright then suddenly stopped recording. “Who are the Lightning Seeds?” he asked live. “I’ve never heard of them?” Brody’s heart sank. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, they took it off!’ They obviously hate it, it’s over.”

But then Wright said, “This is fantastic!” and turned it back on from the beginning. When the song ended, he played it again. “Pure” became Brody’s favorite song. It was “a miracle that changed my life.”

Brody has become one of the best songwriters of his generation, penning beautifully melodic and uplifting indie pop songs steeped in the vulnerability and uncertainty of life – just think how his timeless English football song “Three Lions” is also an anthem. He weaves his images. and reflects the reality of being a football fan (that your team doesn’t usually win, but you still live in hope).

Brody, 65, has a gift for what he calls “bittersweet.” Where does it come from? “I’m a pathetic bastard and I’m trying desperately not to be,” he says, laughing. “I am someone who finds it difficult to live in the moment. So I really try to look at the positive. I don’t want to give in to negativity because this is my natural habitat.”

His excellent new memoir Tomorrow – today: The Lightning Seeds, football and space post-punk reads like one of his own songs: full of soul and sparkling melancholy. It contains hugely entertaining, often self-deprecating stories about a journey that began in Liverpool’s thriving punk scene of the late 1970s, populated by an incredible number of future pop stars: members of Brody’s first band Big in Japan, Holly Johnson. Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the KLF’s Bill Drummond, as well as Echo and the Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch, Dead or Alive’s Pete Burns and The Teardrop Explodes’ Julian Cope.

He became obsessed with music and “accidentally” became a studio producer for bands such as Echo and the Bunnymen and The Fall before achieving his own success in the 90s with hits such as “Lucky You”, “Perfect” and “The Fall”. . “Life or Riley”, written subsequently, became famous on the charts. birth of son Riley in 1991.

But the book is also a personal story of failure, faith, tragedy and loss—and ultimately, the redemptive power of music. Sitting in an empty west London pub on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, Brody, short and thin, wearing a dark blue shirt and gray stubble, is a genial companion: cheerful, sincere and reserved.

But he admits he was nervous about the book because he didn’t plan to reveal so much about himself. “I’m a little unprepared and that wasn’t my intention.” When I was writing the audiobook, I kept saying, “I don’t think I want to share this, can I take it out?”

Brody is more open than ever before. He was born in Liverpool in 1958 into a happy Orthodox Jewish family, and the book reveals for the first time what it was like for him to grow up Jewish, with what he describes in his memoirs as a “small but constant sense of threat.” .

“Contrary to popular belief, Liverpool were really racist at the time,” he says. In the book, he writes about some awkward moments, including a Big in Japan concert in Halifax where National Front members did the Nazi salute (“it was scary”).

This meant that he was more reserved and self-confident than many of the larger-than-life characters at Eric’s, the famous Liverpool nightclub at the center of the punk scene. “I think I just felt like I had nothing left. I felt a little lonely. Some people didn’t treat you particularly well. I think that made me extra careful. And I think that makes you more likely to hang your head. You don’t want to be the frontman. You want to be the person behind the frontman.”

What he really wanted, he said, was “Keith to be somebody’s Jagger.” But without a band, he was reluctant to sing his own songs, encouraged by his good friend and longtime collaborator Terry Hall of The Specials. Hall died last December. “The idea of ​​Terry not being there is strange. I always think, “Terry would like that – oh.”

This continued until the release of the third album in 1994. pleasurethat “I found my voice. I’m not just there. It received a platinum certification. How did he become a pop star? “In the truest sense of the word,” he smiles. “Well, I got dressed. I put on sunglasses and grew a beard. I looked like Mr. Potato Head. Was he trying to hide? “Looking back, yes. I’m not the most confident person.”

Things accelerated with 1996’s Three Lions, co-written with comedians David Baddiel and Frank Skinner, which briefly made him “McDonald’s famous.” He initially turned down an offer to write England’s official song for Euro 96, but was delighted when he saw posters promoting the tournament’s games at Liverpool’s Anfield stadium. So “returns home” – as in a tournament, not a cup, which has become a widespread (incorrect) interpretation.

“It’s like Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA,’” he says of another misunderstood song. “It’s all about the tournament – ​​it couldn’t be simpler. But the songs take on a different meaning. And that suits me. Because it’s not mine anymore.”

In fact, the song was misunderstood from the very beginning. The FA initially rejected the offer, irritated that he was not triumphant enough and irritated by the perception of “30 years of injury”. “They said, ‘You say we’re rubbish!’” The England team didn’t like it either. “The players asked, ‘Are you talking about urine?’ But it’s not about the team. It’s about the fans.”

But Three Lions captured the mood of the nation. “I didn’t know how big of a headline it would become for my career. You can talk about Pure all you want, but no one will remember it.”

The song’s success left him with a dilemma that he still struggles with: whether to perform it at Lightning Seeds concerts. At the first gig after Euro 96 in Preston he decided against it, but at the end of the show the lights came up and a front row full of football shirts appeared. “There were children crying,” he says. “There are still people who are unhappy about it.”

Dizzying heights (1996) gave The Lightning Seeds another hit album, but Brody quickly fizzled out after his divorce. After the thoughtful 1999 album Incline failed (“my sense of heights failed me”), he took a break from the group – only to struggle with the loss of status. “And it’s funny because I never liked fame. But these are real changes. There’s no need for you to think. This is because you are in the background all the time. You don’t know whether someone recognizes you or not. And I wasn’t famous enough to be protected. It was a funny no man’s land.”

Although he had success producing The Coral and The Zutons, these were dark times for Brody. In the early 1990s, he suffered a series of deaths over several years: both of his parents died one after the other; His sister Sharon was diagnosed with a brain tumor at the age of 44, and his older brother Robert committed suicide shortly afterwards in 2006. He felt as if “the wing had broken.”

In the book, Brody writes movingly about his brother, but he took on the topic reluctantly. Robert, a criminal lawyer, suffered from depression and, aged 55, jumped from the top of Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral. “It stays raw,” Brody says calmly. “I have to deal with so much suffering around my brother. It’s hard to be around people with mental health problems. And frankly, it’s difficult to figure out when they are sick and when they are terrible. We had a somewhat unpleasant relationship. This remains partially unresolved.” He didn’t know how much all this affected him. “Later you say, ‘God, I didn’t feel good.’ I don’t think I’m doing a good job.”

This led to Brody, living alone, finding solace in alcohol – one day he left his apartment drunk and stumbled upon a film set. paddington Film in Notting Hill. “It was my attempt to live in the moment. I thought life was a fragile thread, so I decided to stop worrying about music. But that doesn’t mean getting drunk and becoming a fucking idiot. It took me a while to realize that.” Gradually he asked himself, “What would make you feel fulfilled?” Oh, music.”

Realizing that he “let The Lightning Seeds slip through the cracks,” he credits his son Riley, who became his manager (and live guitarist), for reviving his “path back to music.” Lightning Seeds Album 2022 See you in the stars, their first album in 13 years, was full of classic Brody vibes and tunes. “I think my concentration is back. I seem to have recovered.”

The future looks bright and he has made peace with his past: his legacy will be Three Lions, not Pure. “Unless I can do something else,” he says. “Maybe that’s what makes me want to try.”