Graeme Clark of Wet Wet Wet: ‘We’re privileged to do this’
Wet Wet Wet in 2025 looks rather different to the Wet Wet Wet of 1994, when the Scottish serial hitmakers topped the charts for a staggering 15 weeks with their memorable take on The Troggs’ Love Is All Around, from the soundtrack to that year’s monster hit movie, Four Weddings and a Funeral.
While some top bands continue without any original members – Lynyrd Skynyrd and GWAR immediately come to mind – ‘The Wets’ still have one in their ranks, namely bass player Graeme Clark, as well as long-time member, guitarist Graeme Duffin, and are still packing out decent-sized venues, despite drummer Tommy Cunningham, keyboard player Neil Mitchell and original lead singer Marti Pellow no longer being involved.
Vocalist Kevin Simm, a former member of Liberty X, has been the group’s frontman since 2018.
The Cambridge Independent caught up with Graeme Clark via Zoom at his home studio south of London (as I logged on I could hear him practising away on his bass guitar).
Graeme says he’s trying to remain creative, keep his bass-playing technique in a “state of repair, that will enable me to go out live”, and planning to write some new songs for a new record (the band’s last album, The Journey, was released in 2021).
“New music is difficult nowadays but I enjoy the challenge of trying to connect with people,” he explains, “so that’s life for me at the moment…
“I think music is certainly different to when I first started doing it, but it is what it is – and let’s face it, I’ve been here a long time so there’s no reason for it to be the same as it was back then.
“We primarily go out as a live band, and people come and see us for specific reasons: because they want to hear some Wet Wet Wet songs, and we do a pretty specific thing. So I feel privileged that I can still do that after all this time.”
Graeme recalls that when the band were auditioning singers to replace Marti Pellow, who left to pursue a solo career in 2017, a lot of them were “sort of Marti impersonators, if you like”.
“I don’t mean to downcry them, we had to do that [find a Marti Pellow sound-alike] to a certain extent, but with Kevin he had a completely different type of charisma, he was a different type of personality.
“If it’s going to work, it’s never going to work as a pastiche of ourselves; the way it’s going to work is if there’s something different enough but still has somebody that can deliver and sing well.
“That was always going to be a really difficult thing to do but I think with Kevin we managed it, and he’s been there since 2018.
“So it’s seven years he’s been there – for us that’s a long time. But I understand for people who are looking in on this, it’s still relatively new.”
Wet Wet Wet have had so many great songs over the years – Sweet Little Mystery, Wishing I Was Lucky, Angel Eyes (Home and Away), Sweet Surrender and Goodnight Girl, to name but a few – that I suggest that many people (myself included) are just happy to hear these songs being sung, even if it isn’t by the group’s original and more well-known vocalist.
“Well you hope so, you never know,” says Graeme, 59, “I mean there might be people out there who say ‘We want the other guy back now’, but we were lucky enough that they accepted [Kevin].
“But there are some people that may never accept it – and that’s okay as well. I just want the chance to go out and play these songs because I love them.
“I’m a big part of them – I contributed, I created, I produced, I wrote, so for me they’re part of my life and I can’t just walk away from it, because they feel like my children.
“I think that’s said a lot by songwriters, and you do have that connection to them.
“You never know how they’re going to react, out there in the public domain, or whether people are going to react to them.
“The beauty for us was that people did react. Sometimes not the way you wanted them to react and sometimes they reacted to an extraordinary extent. So that was always a beautiful thing for me.
“I always felt that people either loved us or they hated us.”
It seems there are a lot of people in the former camp, as Wet Wet Wet have sold an impressive 15 million singles and albums to date and have spent more than 500 weeks in the UK charts.
At the height of their success only the removal of Love Is All Around from record stores prevented it from becoming the longest-running number one single in British chart history.
Drummer Tommy Cunningham left the fold in 2022, citing tinnitus – which he had suffered from since 2008 – as the reason. Neil Mitchell announced his departure shortly after.
“Obviously getting somebody to fill in for Tommy and Neil was difficult as well,” notes Graeme, “but we managed to find people, and to be honest, with Tommy and Neil they didn’t want to be there anymore.
“I think they’d just had enough, so there’s no point in keeping guys there that no longer want to be there.
“So to me the challenge was finding people that want to be there and could bring something to the party, and that was Simon [Lea, drums] and Matt [Carter, keyboards].
“They came on board and they’ve really enjoyed being the new people. New people bring a different musical dynamic.
“I love Tommy, I love Neil, I love their playing, I love what they brought to it, but sometimes bringing something new energises me, in a sense, so it’s nice to be energised again – and hopefully that will be conveyed when people come and see the show.”
Graeme says of Tommy’s condition, a condition that has sadly affected numerous musicians: “I think it got to a head for Tommy; he was obviously conscious of his hearing.
“I think he wanted to be an old man and be able to hear, and that was really what it came down to. So you can’t deny him that and, as far as I know, I think he’s OK, I think he’s getting through it.
“I think tinnitus is one of these things. I have it mildly, it doesn’t really affect me, but we all get it.
“If you go to a gig and if the music’s too loud… I remember in the 70s when I first started going to gigs, you woke up in the morning and you had a ringing in your ears because the music had been so loud.
“So it’s one of these things; when you love music when you’re young you’re bullet-proof and you just go and accept this.
“Nowadays, people to come to gigs with ear defenders in, don’t they, and they’re acutely aware and it’s brought into sharp focus because everybody knows that maybe too much of a loud noise isn’t that good for us.
“And it has changed, I must admit. When I go to gigs now, it is definitely a lot quieter and sometimes that’s nice, sometimes I want it really loud!”
Wet Wet Wet will be appearing at the Cambridge Corn Exchange on Tuesday, 28 January, 2025. Tickets, priced £37-£54.50, are available from cornex.co.uk. For more on the band, go to wetwetwet.co.uk.