Max Bianco draws Cambridge chapter to a close at the Six Bells

Max Bianco departed the Cambridge stage which has been his musical home for eight years with a celebratory evening at the Six Bells on Friday (6 June).

The guitarist, songwriter and latterly bouzouki player has played a key role not just on his own behalf but on behalf of countless musicians around Cambridge.

With his signature attire a unique mix of charity shop, circus, troubadour and a dash of Grand Ole Opry, Max has livened up the city’s sense of its own flash and dazzle. He’s also inspired artists, including Sam Harris (of the Free Press), whose stunning portrait overlooks the back room where Max agrees to an interview shortly before the Friday night musical entertainment begins.

Max rocked up in Cambridge eight years ago on the way to London from his native Hartlepool. He was already a musician: “Since the day I was born I had a guitar in me hand, my mum said.”

“I travelled down alone,” he adds of his arrival in Cambridge. “I was living with no goal basically, day-dreaming I was going to move to the big city and I thought this was close and I’d get closer somehow, but I just ended up meeting all these musicians straight away.”

Right from the off things started happening.

“Sam Harris was staring at me on the train, and up north that means he’s going to fight you and he starts walking towards me and says ‘can I have one of your cigarettes for one of me beers?’ and later that day he took me to an open mic night so he painted this portrait. That was the day we met on the train.”

Max quickly made his mark as the front man for the Blue Hearts, a hard-working indie rock band. Later he made an EP with Cambridge-based Kimberley Rew, who wrote 'Walking On Sunshine’ for Katrina & The Waves. His solo work has been a mainstay of more recent times, though his star has had a massive spike since teaming up with Pete Doherty of The Libertines last year. So how did that breaking point arrive?

“People believed in me so I kept on going,” says Max. “Everybody here has just let me be myself you know, it’s so sweet of everybody.

“The breaking point was 18 months ago when Pete Doherty saw me playing in Justines in Margate [Justines is a music venue owned by Carl Barat of The Libertines].”

Doherty, also an integral part of The Libertines since the band emerged from London’s indie scene in 1997, subsequently asked Max to join him on his solo tour.

“He’s back on tour with The Libertines at the minute but I was with him two weeks ago for his new album release, it was just me and him on stage for four gigs for the release of the new album, ‘Felt Better Alive’, which is absolutely incredible.

So what instruments do you play?

“Well now I’m as bouzouki player, since two weeks ago.

“I could play a couple of things before, then Peter asked me to go on tour with him, we had no rehearsals, so you go out in front of a couple of thousand people and you ****ing played. That was at Prism in Kingston. It was all these songs I'd never heard of. There’s a video of me looking at him on stage like ‘you ****’ cos he’s kept me on my toes, I think he was doing that on purpose to push myself to the extreme. He really admired how I managed to keep up with him constantly.

“Pete is such a good friend and he’s a good mentor and he’s living such a clean life, he’s inspired me to be healthier to be honest.”

So does he tell you what key the song is in before he starts playing?

“No, no.”

Nothing?

“Nah,” laughs Max.

Isn’t that a bit mean?

“Nah, it’s great,” replies Max with a smile. “He knew I had the capability of it. We’ve chatted loads, I’ve shown him songs before, and he really takes me under his wing. It’s the first time someone’s pushed me in a long time and I thought it was beautiful, it was like, for a purpose, y’know. I admire him for that cos I can play the bouzouki now. It’s right strings, upside down, with a dropped D. It’s chaos.”

Mansata from the Six Bells (off Mill Road) pops over with a going-away present of the highest order - a really amazing check three-quarter length cotton coat. It totally suits Max. I ask Mansata what her surname is and someone says ‘Queen of Cambridge’.

“I’ll take that,” she says.

Max is heading for Camden to start with - “I’ll be in Camden and Brixton for the foreseeable” - and he says “there’s a lot in the pipeline”, though he’ll probably still pop in to the Six Bells - which has previously exhibited his artwork - when he gets the chance.

“[Landlady] Eileen O’Brien has been the heart of this community for quite a while, this is more home than my home now. Everyone bigs each other up, we all love each other. It’s a hub for songwriters’ music, if you like to take things back to basics. I love the place.”

Max is big on local performers and thinks that Cambridge musicians should have pride of place in the Cambridge Folk Festival when it swings back into action.

“The Thursday night at the Folk Festival could be local artists and bands,” he says. “They only open Stage 2 [on the Thursday] but give the stage to other people to support local musicians. Thursday Stage 2 should be the Cambridge stage.”

There’s only one name at the top of that bill should it come to pass.