Interview - Paul Heaton: On his bike to save the great British pub

Just a few years ago, Paul Heaton was selling-out arenas and scoring top-10 singles for fun.

These days, however, his gigs are decidedly more intimate, and the prospect of a chart-topper seems about as likely as his beloved Sheffield United winning the Champions League.

Not that the former Beautiful South singer seems to mind. In fact, he's positively delighted by his change in fortunes.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

"When I was playing arenas, we'd just roll up in Sheffield and not see any of the city," he says. "I'll see more of it on my current tour than I have done in years.

"I feel like I'm much more in control and I enjoy that. I can run my own Facebook page, answer emails from fans and organise a lot of things myself – which I could never do in The Beautiful South.

"There are advantages to being less popular."

Recently, he told music critic David Quantick that he was looking forward to a "brilliantly long, slow decline, until I've just got one fan".

Despite such wry humour, the reality is far less bleak. Heaton is still very much in demand as a live performer, and his new solo album, Acid Country, has been picking up some very positive reviews.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Said album leads listeners on an intriguing folk and country-infused journey through the lives of a variety of characters, including a lonely, regretful old man on the heartbreaking Young Man's Game.

"I'm quite nosy and I often paint a picture of people I don't know, who I see sat alone at a bus stop, for example," explains Heaton. "I'll start to imagine things about them, and things that have happened to them.

"I'm particularly fond of Young Man's Game. I like the message of that because it's where I'll be in 10 or 15 years."

Perhaps the most talked-about song is the uncharacteristically bitter title track, which sees the 48-year-old rail against what he sees as the culture of greed taking over the UK.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

"I'm like Victor Meldrew mixed with Arthur Scargill," he says. "It's about how much I love the place, but how much I hate what it's becoming.

"It starts off as a warts-and-all love letter to the UK, but then becomes more about what we've become and who we blame for that.

"We're being guided by greed. Constant adverts tell us to have the best car and best hoover. It's more and more materialistic. People say there should be a war on poverty, but poverty is caused by greed.

"I see myself as a patriot though. I've stayed in this country while other successful musicians have moved abroad to dodge taxes. There's probably only me and Paul Weller left."

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

One aspect of UK culture about which Heaton is particularly passionate is the nation's pubs, and he is genuinely concerned about the much-publicised decline of the industry.

So much so that earlier this year he embarked on a rather unconventional tour to draw attention to the issue – cycling 1,000 miles round the length and breadth of England to play gigs at a host of local hostelries.

"If all the UK's pubs suddenly closed overnight, there'd be riots, but what's happening is that they're dying off slowly," he says.

"I don't want us to get to 75 with our hair falling out and say: 'Where have all the pubs gone? How did this happen?' I don't want our evening's entertainment to be going to Tesco, buying some beer and going home with it."

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Regardless of the serious side, he enjoyed the pub tour so much that he's already planning another for 2012 – this time taking in the wider UK as well as England – but for the moment he's returned to slightly more conventional gigs. As well as touring with Madness in the build-up to Christmas, he will play The Leadmill, in his childhood city of Sheffield, at the end of this month.

"I get really excited whenever I go back to the place I grew up, and Bramhall Lane, of course," he says. "This time, I've had friends from school get in touch, which is one of the good things about Facebook. It'll be nice to catch up with them while I'm there."

Despite his connections to the steel city, it is the pop bands he formed while living in Hull for which Heaton will always be remembered.

After early success in the 1980s with The Housemartins – a group that also featured future superstar DJ Norman Cook – he went on to shift millions of albums and enjoy a procession of hits with The Beautiful South through the 1990s and early part of the last decade.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

"It was such good fun," he recalls. "Going down to London, appearing on Top of the Pops – it used to get us so excited. They'd foolishly ask us to get down to the BBC for 10 in the morning. We'd be sat on the train in Hull at about seven, and we'd have the gin and tonics out. We'd always find ways to entertain ourselves.

"I didn't take success in my stride though. I was thinking about that at V Festival this year. When I was there headlining with The Beautiful South, we wouldn't mix with other bands. I was quite shy, whereas now I'm more open in speaking to people.

"I miss The Beautiful South because there was great camaraderie, but the human connection is so much stronger now. I'm better off where I am today."

Paul Heaton plays The Leadmill in Sheffield on Thursday September 30. Acid Country is out now.