Baxter Dury: 'Songwriting for me is playful, inaccurate, abstracted and psychedelic'

Writing the lyrics involved “scraping some of the details of my past and spreading it thinly into some sort of song-type story format”, he says, “but it’s not very accurate, poignant or meaningful”.

“I’ve allowed other people to make up their own interpretations because they might be better than the origins of the songs,” he continues. “I think that’s what songwriting, for me anyway, is more about; it’s playful and inaccurate and abstracted and psychedelic and all that stuff. It doesn’t want to be herded by it too much, it’s not documents of any time. It’s nuances and feelings and stuff, and then you just give up, it’s a free-for-all.

“There are bits, a few words and references, it slightly conjures up an atmosphere. It’s a tribute to my past, but it’s not about dad, it’s about feelings.”

Dury arrived at this album having written Chaise Longue, a much-praised memoir about his colourful, bohemian upbringing. He said the process of penning the book had left him with stories “buzzing around” that were “easy to reference” and that he “just sort of tapped into that”.

“I think sometimes with source material I’ve got a code to what I’m writing about, I’ve got a key, and then I can mythologise what I’d mythologise anyway in that kind of hip-hop way, but inaccurately interpreted in a west London, I’m-stealing-it way. That was really what my agenda was. Beyond that it’s not that deep, it’s just a motivational trigger: here’s a bunch of stuff I can ref off.”

After the Serge Gainsbourg-like leanings of his previous albums, Prince of Tears and The Night Chancers, I Thought I Was Better Than You ventures into hip-hop and American R&B territory with its use of loops and synthesisers. “I think I’m in a good position where I can do what I want, really, within reason,” Dury says. “My presence anchors it, it doesn’t really matter how much I diversify the sound. My presence keeps it similar-sounding, it was just a more fun way of doing it. When you do something with a different approach that absolutely frees you. There’s nothing like cyclical expectations that ruins the process.”

At the heart of all of Dury’s work is a love of language that was instilled at a young age. Rather than being an avid reader, though, he jokes that he was “an avid bull****er more like, I was always bull****ing my way out of stuff, and obviously language has been key to quite a lot of success around me, so I thought it was interesting in that way”.

“Also from some of the people around me, you didn’t have to adhere to some of the more strict rules of it, you could just do what you wanted within it and it could still work, that was quite a nice way freedom that you don’t get if you’ve been to university and all that sort of stuff, which is great but it makes everything very orthodox. If you can bend those rules and still describe something well, that’s an art in itself, I think.”

Dury’s songs are consistently to the point. He says editing is an important part of the process. “Maintaining perspective in anything and trusting a few people is always key, and getting rid of excess,” he says. “I don’t like music that is too indulgent. I try to leave all the functioning components there and get rid of anything else.”

Over the summer, Dury supported Pulp in Hyde Park and Blur at Wembley Stadium. He says of the experience: “Jarvis (Cocker) is a really good friend of mine, and that was nice anyway. Supporting people is kind of difficult because you’re on your own tip and there’s a lot of people that really want to see them, you’re just interfering, you’re delaying, that’s essentially what you’re doing. You’ve only got a layer of people that are enthusiastic, most people are pretty bored, but it was good.

”The Blur one was more of a festival and actually it was really nice to see them all. I’ve met them a few times and when we saw them they were obviously really content with everything that happened over the last few months. It was nice to see them in such a happy place and watch them play, and they were brilliant.

“Both things were pretty brilliant. It was nice to see them all healthy and nice and polite, so it was good, both experiences.”

After the success of Chaise Longue, Dury reveals that he has “signed up” for another book, however, he says:​​​​​​​ “It’s much harder than I thought. The first one was a kind of fluke, I’d been rehearsing those stories for years, ​​​​​​​the second one is trickier. Childhood’s a bit of a fantasy ​​​​​​​but real life is I guess more what I try to avoid​​​​​​​, so it’s much harder. And for anyone involved, it’s much harder. I am writing it but I’m trying to do it in the most abstract way​​​​​​​, but I wouldn’t say it was easy. It’s a work in progress.”

Baxter Dury plays at The Leadmill, Sheffield on October 16.