Marti Pellow interview: ‘You’ve got to be careful messing with memories of a song...’
Consummate performer, all-round entertainer and former Wet Wet Wet frontman Marti Pellow will resume his Greatest Hits tour next month, with a Cambridge date lined up on Friday, April 22.
During the pandemic, the 56-year-old Glaswegian brought joy to millions of people with his ‘Lockdown Sessions’, broadcast from his home, where his fans would ask him to sing songs from the beginning of his career right up to the present day. This got the star thinking about embarking on a greatest hits tour once restrictions had been lifted.
Tackling a new project pretty much every other year since first leaving multi-platinum selling pop sensations Wet Wet Wet in 1999, Marti has done more as a solo artist – and for longer – than he did with the iconic pop band which dominated the British charts in the ’80s and ’90s.
The set will also feature tracks taken from Marti’s latest album, 2021’s Stargazer, but fear not – those of you, me included, who purely wish to go along to wallow in nostalgia, this will not detract from the overall theme of the tour and the classics will be given an airing.
“It came from a good place,” says Marti, discussing the singing he did on social media throughout lockdown, which included a number of songs by other artists which he had never tackled previously.
“I got approached by a family who asked me if I could sing a wee song for their mammy who’d got Covid, and I got to meet her last year on the first leg of this Greatest Hits tour.
“Her family had asked me to sing a wee song for her and I sang that into a mobile phone and pressed send, and they were delighted with it. But a lot of people said, ‘Oh Marti, would you sing another one?’ And it was good from my point of view because I was being part of something – every song had a little destination, or a little backstory.
“I don’t know who got more out of that through lockdown: the people who were listening to the songs or me... and that’s when social media really works for me because there’s a lot of digital noise out there but there was a little destination for the song and so for me it was just wonderful.”
Marti continues: “I try and do some of that in my Greatest Hits tour as well because whether I wrote the song or not is irrelevant; it’s about songs that you’re familiar with. It’s trying to find that balance between educating and entertaining, and it’s leaning more to entertaining for me because I think that’s the type of evening people want to experience, rather than to ask you to go, ‘What are your feelings about this song?’
“Most of the night’s made up just of my entire back catalogue of songs, whether that’s my Wet Wet Wet work, solo work, or songs from those lockdown sessions which people seemed to embrace with much enthusiasm.”
He adds: “It was interesting for me because they would ask me to sing songs which I thought, ‘OK, I’ll have a go at that’ – and it was nice for me to be able to do that. And you never knew who was on the other side of the screen.
“I got some lovely messages from artists that had sang the songs – ‘great version, Marti’ or ‘really enjoyed your interpretation of the song’ from people as diverse as James Taylor and Annie Lennox.”
As well as personal dedications, Marti also sang songs to help out with charitable causes, one of which was to encourage donations to a JustGiving campaign set up by a group of women from his native Clydebank to raise money for essential PPE.
“I think I ended up doing over 100 of those [lockdown] recordings,” reveals Marti, who asked his fans on social media what kind of show they wanted to see (“You’ve spoken and I listened,” he says reassuringly).
“There was a real sense of community and a lot of people were watching. It was nothing too heavy, it was just me shooting the breeze in general.”
As mentioned, Marti is planning on throwing in one or two songs from Stargazer. “It’s just to say here you are, here’s a different soundscape of where I was going anyway, musically,” he explains. “When I come to Cambridge, I don’t know what it will be like on the night – you’ve just got to read the room. Luckily enough, I have a band that knows my entire back catalogue.”
Marti, who says he likes to “trawl the internet” discovering new artists, had a hand in writing all of the tracks on Stargazer. “That album was a bit different for me because I wrote a lot of it on guitar,” he notes, “and it kind of kept me in a certain way, because I’m not the best guitarist in the world but it kept me in the circle of where my writing abilities could take me!
“On that particular instrument, rather than the melodic structure that I can explore more on piano, so by writing on guitar it made me interact with my songwriting in a different way. So I had a very, almost ’70s feel – I’d been listening to a lot of Bowie, a lot of early Roxy Music, a lot of guitar-driven music.”
Marti says of songwriting: “I’m always working on different projects and learning about my craft – every day’s a school day with songwriting for me – whether or not that’s music that sees the light of day in my catalogue of music or soundscapes that I’m exploring. I guess as songwriters you’re always looking to be inspired and if your ears are open and your eyes are open, there’s so much to draw from.”
On Marti’s last visit to Cambridge, in 2018, he did a slowed-down, bluesy version of Sweet Little Mystery, one of Wet Wet Wet’s biggest hits. I had to be honest and tell him that I preferred the original. “I think what you do is you colour songs and you change them in a way,” he explains.
“I think you don’t change the melodic structure – ie the top line – but you can arrange songs in different ways and show them in different lights. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there; you’ve got to watch when you mess with people’s memories of a particular song because it’s a time and a place... So I think it’s just about mashing it up and exploring, seeing how far you can take a song that may be 35 years old.”
Wet Wet Wet’s best-known tunes include Wishing I Was Lucky, Angel Eyes, Temptation, Sweet Surrender and the number one hits With A Little Help from My Friends, Goodnight Girl and, of course, Love Is All Around – for many, the soundtrack to the summer of 1994.
Which are Marti’s favourite Wet Wet Wet songs to sing? “I particularly like the Picture This album because I think as a songwriter I was at the top of my game with the Wet Wet Wet boys then,” he says, “so I like Julia Says or Somewhere Somehow – songs like that. I think it was a very cohesive piece of work that.”
Marti left Wet Wet Wet in 2017 and is no longer in touch with the guys in the band, who have since recruited a new frontman in the form of ex-Liberty X singer Kevin Simm. “I think they’ve moved on, haven’t they?” he says, “I think they’re doing their own thing, as I am. It was in a certain period and I enjoyed my time with that.”
Marti, who looks pretty good for his age – his preferred form of exercise is swimming – is very grateful to have had such a successful career which has spanned nearly four decades. “I think for me it’s right here, right now in this particular time where we are,” he says.
“It’s about looking to the future. I’ve been afforded that luxury as an artist to be able to do that and have a fanbase that follows you whether you’re on the stage on Broadway or whether you’re doing musical theatre or whether you happen to be working with orchestras...
“I think it’s very important that you still keep an eye on your audience as you grow as an artist and that we all go on a journey together – and it never ceases to amaze me that 30-odd years down the line I can still be afforded that luxury and a fanbase that’s so supportive of me. That’s more what I generally embrace.”
Marti is currently writing a musical, a “real labour of love” that “embraces the heritage of Scotland”. Before that sees the light of day, catch him at the Cambridge Corn Exchange on Friday, April 22. For tickets, visit cornex.co.uk. For more on Marti, go to martipellowofficial.co.uk.
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