Mark Morriss: Ex-Bluetone strikes a new tone

Leaving behind bandmates to strike out on your own in the music business is a hard thing to do – made doubly so when those bandmates have been with you for 18 years. But for Mark Morriss, formerly of The Bluetones, it’s not just a time of sadness – it’s also a time of new beginnings.

The 40-year-old singer, from Hounslow, Middlesex, is now striding out as a solo artist, with a new album and tour in the offing.

His first solo disc, as yet to be titled, is being funded in advance by fans – in the increasingly popular way, via the website pledgemusic.com – while his forthcoming shows have a twist. Part of the evening at Escobar in Leeds, as at venues in six other cities, will be given over to a music quiz.

Of his Pledge campaign, Mark says: “The basic premise is that you reach out to your audience and say, ‘I’ve got an album written, I just need funds to record it’. It’s £8 in advance for a dowload or £10 for a CD. Hopefully people like stuff I’ve done in the past and they could take a gamble on it.

“It removes the whole need for a record label. It gives control – or flexibility – back to the artist. Flexibility is the key.”

The idea of the quiz night helps him share one of his favourite pastimes.

For now he’s keeping schtum on the most obscure question he’ll be posing – “I can’t really say, it’ll give away the answer” – but it’s clear he thoroughly enjoyed his research. “It was quite amusing finding out pop trivia, looking into things I knew three-quarters of the answer to and linking answers,” he says. “It made it more more fun. The key to being a good quiz host is to make it challenging but do-able. It’s no fun doing a crossword that you can’t finish but nor is it fun doing a crossword that takes 20 seconds.”

Like many artists with a track record – his began in the Britpop era with the 1996 hit Slight Return and the No 1 album Expecting to Fly – Morriss finds himself having to be more resourceful in the file-sharing age. “To a degree you do all across the board,” he says. “Less CDs are being bought, fewer people’s music is being acquired legitimately. You have to find what works for yourself. That means sometimes cutting out a few of the middle men along the way. It’s just business sense.”

A sober realisation of declining sales seems to have played a part in the mutual decision to end the The Bluetones last year. Despite being one of the biggest Britpop bands, their star had waned. Equally, says Morriss: “The four of us had reached a point in our lives where we wanted to try other things.

“We loved and enjoyed The Bluetones so much, we did not want to drag on and on as a tribute band to ourselves. So we decided to go out with a bang.

“We’re still the best of friends – I spoke to two of the band yesterday, just socially. But it was our baby and we decided to put it to bed the old-fashioned way – the band just splits up.”

The Bluetones’ parting tour, last November, was emotional. In Leeds, they played at the O2 Academy.

“It was Saturday night as well,” remembers Morriss. “Saturday night in Leeds is always good fun. It made it extra special. The whole tour was emotional and really enjoyable. It was really jubiliant. We were grateful to the audiences for that.”

Don’t expect a radical change of musical direction from Morriss now that he 
is a solo artist. At home he might listen to electronic music from the 1970s – bands such as Kraftwerk and Space (“the French band – I can’t stop listening to their first album with Magic Fly on it, my four-year-old absolutely adores that song”) – but 
his music is still rooted 
in the country idiom 
(“alt-country, not Kenny Rogers”).

“I just think, for me, it’s kind of a continuation on this path I’ve been on since I was 14 when I started writing songs,” he says.

“The medium I present them in changed, it’s not in the context of a band, but I’ve not had a change of direction and I’m not likely to.

“It’s more from Neil Young. It’s what I like and what I’m good at doing. I’m not Mozart, I’m not suddenly going to become jazz-funk or grime. It’s what I do. I’m not a renaissance man – more’s the pity.”

History of Hounslow boy who formed The Bluetones

The Blutones formed in Hounslow in 1993, a partnership between Mark, his brother Scott, guitarist Adam Devlin and drummer Ed Chesters.

They first broke through in the mid 1990s early singles such as Slight Return, Cut Some Rug and ‘Marblehead Johnson’ troubled the higher reaches of the charts. It was around this era that they headlined Glastonbury, had a number one album and even managed that rarest of feats for an indie band, breaching the top-five.

Mark Morriss September 15, Escobar, Great George Street, Leeds.