The Lightning Seeds’ Ian Broudie has spoken to NME about the band’s forthcoming greatest hits compilatio, their celebrated comeback and his work on the first Zutons album in 16 years.
The 20-track compilation ‘Tomorrow’s Here Today: 35 Years Of The Lightning Seeds’ will be released on October 4, 2024, as a non-chronological collection of the band’s finest moments – taking in huge ‘90s hits such as ‘Pure’, ‘The Life Of Riley’, ‘Sense’, ‘Lucky You’ and ‘Marvellous’, more recent tracks including ‘Emily Smiles’ and choice singles and album tracks such as ‘All I Want’ and ‘The Nearly Man’ from 1990s debut album ‘Cloudcuckooland’ and ‘My Best Day’ from 1993’s ‘Jollification’.
The release will be accompanied by a UK headline tour in November and December 2024, following on from this year’s support tour with Madness which kicks off on December 1.
Meanwhile, Broudie has recently produced the long-awaited new Zutons’ album and released his first book, also called Tomorrow’s Here Today, which explores in anecdotal form his history on Liverpool’s ‘80s underground scene alongside Echo & The Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes, as well as the loss of his brother Robert to suicide in 2006.
“It’s become my favourite time,” Broudie told NME of The Lightning Seeds’ return with last year’s seventh album ‘See You In The Stars’, now with his son Riley as manager and Lightning Seeds guitarist. “I love my band, I love playing live, which I never used to like, and I feel like we’re really good. And then all of a sudden it’s 35 years since ‘Pure’ so we thought that was a milestone.”
He continued: “We’d just got ownership back of the first two albums, which disappeared into the ether, never to get any royalties or anything just after they were made. But we managed to get them back. It just felt like it’d be nice to celebrate 35 years and do a couple of things. Maybe do something for Record Store Day and two or three new tracks and make it a year of celebrating, culminating in the tour and the compilation at the end of next year.”
NME caught up with Broudie to talk marking their legacy, England’s chances in the Euros, and what to expect from this Zutons’ album.
NME: Hello Ian. A Greatest Hits seems a good way to mark your return.
Broudie: “It’s funny because The Lightning Seeds was just me originally, so you can’t ever split up. I feel like we’ve returned but it’s been more of an emotional return rather than arguing with the bass player and throwing your sticks at him. It feels like a great moment that will hopefully go on for the next couple of years, see how I feel.”
Looking back on the songs, were there any tunes you were particularly proud of?
“There was a point with The Lightning Seeds where I felt like it was never going to happen. And then ‘Pure’ was this miracle that changed everything. It’s a song I didn’t finish, I had no record contract, no band, nothing going for it, 100 copies pressed up in Rough Trade, but it changed my life. If I was ever proud of anything, it’s the one I never finished properly. I didn’t get a chance to ruin it totally.”
Were there any hits that surprised you?
“I love the fact that they are these little bubbles, these little moments in time. I feel like music is this puzzle and I’m trying to do this thing that I kinda hear in my head. But as soon as it’s finished, three months later I listen to what I did and think, ‘That’s not it’. So it’s like a puzzle you can never solve, but you’re addicted to playing.
“Then you realise they’re all just these little moments that make a pattern. Even though they’re not what you wanted, they’ve captured a moment in time. And when you see all of them, it’s like ‘wow’. I didn’t think I’d get to this point.”
It’s great to see a lesser-known classic like ‘All I Want’ on there.
“On the first record, ‘Cloudcuckooland’, I was trying to find my voice or be whatever The Lightning Seeds was going to be. They’re all like little experiments but I felt like ‘Pure’ and ‘All I Want’ were it, that’s who I am. I put on a track called ‘The Nearly Man’, just because it was just so odd on that album. It wasn’t really what I needed to be but I’ve always had a lot of affection for it. We’ve never played it live because I don’t think we could, and I’ve never done a song like that again. I think I was trying to write ‘Windmills Of Your Mind’ or something and it just went terribly wrong.
“So I wanted to include that. ‘All I Want’ was funny because ‘Pure’ was the single because it had been out before I got to do the album and I always thought ‘All I Want’ was the second single. I went to America and I got this thing from the record company saying ‘we’ve put ‘All I Want’ on the b-sides single of the single’. I went ‘but that’s supposed to be the second single!’ And I remember them saying ‘just re-record it a bit faster’.”
Do any songs remind you of particular turns in your life?
“They’re kind of like the story of my life. When I look at the canon of work and my life, I definitely had no plan. These days they go to music schools and it’s a career. Everything with me is just blundering from one thing to the next. But now seeing it all it feels almost like there is a plan, it’s just nobody told me.”
How do you feel about your songs being misunderstood as upbeat when they’re often lyrically dark?
“It doesn’t bother me. ‘Three Lions’ is the ultimate example of that. You make your songs and they are what they mean to you. You make these little pieces of whatever music is, little bits of tunes with magic rubbed in that you didn’t know quite how you got there, and it didn’t exist and now it does exist. Then you send them off into the world and people who have nothing in common with you, who might live in Alaska or Argentina hear them and take what they feel is in them, make them their own and take a meaning from them. You get to go and play in Argentina and it’s a bond in common, this song. It’s theirs as much as yours. You can’t control them.
“‘Three Lions’ was a bit like that for me. It was so difficult for me to know whether to play it live or not play it live – it’s the guys singing it, it was a football song and New Order don’t play their football song [‘World In Motion’], should I be playing it? But then everyone in the audience wants you to play it and then you do another gig and they don’t want you to play it – I couldn’t do right for doing wrong.”
Do you have any predictions for the Euros?
“They’ve now nearly done it three or four times and got to the semis and the finals. So just by the virtue of that you think that we’ve probably got a shot. I have a sneaky feeling that we might win this one.”
What were the most difficult parts of your life to put into your book?
“I didn’t approach it like an autobiography. I tried to approach it like I do with my songs, that they all moments. I thought it might be good to just do a book of anecdotes and then as I was doing it, a lot of personal stuff came out around the anecdotes in a way. So I tried to put all the stuff that maybe it’s hard to talk about within a story that’s amusing.”
You worked on the first Zutons album for 19 years, ‘The Big Decider’ How was that?
“I’m not keen on being a producer. Every now and again, I get talked into it. It’s been like that since the Bunnymen – Bill Drummond talked me into [producing Bunnymen albums], I didn’t even want to do that originally. I worked a lot with The Zutons early on and stuff and it wasn’t a great way that we stopped working together. It was a bit weird. Over the years, Sean [Payne, drummer] played in my band for a while and Abi [Harding, sax] played sax and keyboards with us for a year or so and we were friends.
“There was a certain point where they just asked me would I do a couple of tunes with them. Between the relationships with the band, I just felt like it might not get done if I didn’t, and it would have been a real shame. I heard a song called ‘The Big Decider’ – I don’t know if that’s gonna go on the album but I heard a demo of it. I know Dave [McCabe, singer] had turned his life around – he’d just met someone, his sobriety was there and he was fighting to keep that going, so the words of the song, that this is the big decider, this is the moment, it just really touched me. They’re a great band and it would be a shame if they weren’t doing something so I’m really glad that it all came together.”
Tomorrow’s Here Today: 35 Years Of The Lightning Seeds’ will be released on October 4, 2024, before a UK and Ireland headline tour. Tickets go on sale at 10am on Friday November 24 and will be available here.
November 2024
Friday 8 – Sheffield, Leadmill
Saturday 9 – Norwich, Waterfront
Thursday 14 – Nottingham, Rock City
Friday 15 – Cardiff, Tramshed
Thursday 21 – Bristol, O2 Academy
Friday 22 – Oxford, O2 Academy
Saturday 23 – Bexhill, De La Warr Pavilion
Thursday 28 – Newcastle, Boiler Shop
Friday 29 – Glasgow, Garage
Saturday 30 – Dublin, Academy
December 2024
Sunday 1 – Belfast, Limelight
Thursday 5 – Manchester, Albert Hall
Friday 6 – Leeds, Beckett Students’ Union
Saturday 7 – Liverpool, Olympia
Thursday 12 – Cambridge, Junction
Friday 13 – London, O2 Forum Kentish Town
Saturday 14 – Wolverhampton, The Wulfrun at The Halls