The Zutons: 'Playing live is something that we live for'
Six years on from The Zutons’ reformation, and two decades after their chart debut, the band released their fourth album, The Big Decider, last year. The work of a rejigged line-up, saxophonist Abi Harding agrees that it felt a fresh start for the Liverpudlian group best-known for songs such as Valerie and Why Won't You Give Me Your Love?
“I think having all that time off as well, you obviously grow up as a person in age but also having different tastes and influences from anywhere, really, so I think that sound-wise it was maybe a new beginning,” she says. “Definitely within the band it was because it was a different group of people, other than me, Sean (Payne) and Dave (McCabe), who were the original members.”
The album was written when the trio were flat-sharing during the pandemic. “It was kind of needs must, really, because of Covid,” Harding says. “Sean had been living in LA and came back (to the UK) for personal reasons and was planning to back to LA but then he couldn’t because of the lockdown and he ended up living with Dave.
“I lived in a flat on my own, only a 10-minute drive away but I decided I didn’t want to be on my own all the time, so I bought a blow-up bed and moved in with them...and that was where it was written. One song Dave had for some time, but the majority were written there or finished in that time.
“With the extension of the lockdown, it meant that we couldn’t record when we first intended, so we honed the songs more, I guess, and two of the songs that are now on the album totally changed. They might not have been like that without having had that extra time.
“At the time it was a curse because we were dying to go and record the record, but looking at it from a positive perspective, the songs might not have been as they are.”
The songwriting process between McCabe and Payne was “much more” collaborative than previously, Harding remembers. “Sean wrote a lot of the words – Water, for example, is 50-50, Dave wrote a lot of the verses and Sean wrote the chorus. That was probably one that was good for having extra time, that took a while. It was just the verses originally and over a year later Sean wrote the chorus and had this great idea to bring it out of itself and make it joyous.”
Harding thinks McCabe’s subject matter is “more positive than it maybe was before” since he gave up drugs and alcohol. “But quite a few of them were written before he got sober,” she adds. “One of them, he actually wrote in rehab, which was the last track on the record, Best Of Me, which is a really nice song.
“I think he’s open more, he’s into different music now than he was 20 years ago. He still likes Talking Heads – we all do, and The Beatles and Pink Floyd, but as he’s grown up he’ll put The Eagles on now – I don’t think he would ever have done that 20 years ago.”
Four of the tracks were produced by Nile Rodgers at Abbey Road – “He really loved Creeping On The Dancefloor and within two days Nile was on a Zoom call with us and he was singing the demo to us,” Harding recalls – but the band also drafted in their old friend Ian Broudie, who produced The Zutons’ first album in 2004, to prouduce the title track and in Your Arms. “I think he’s the best out of everyone we’ve ever worked with,” Harding says. “He’s our friend, he’s from where we’re from, and he’s such a great producer. Even though Nile did make you feel comfortable, Ian just has this way.
“He’s very professional but he just puts you at ease and he’s so talented. He really gets involved, maybe more so than Nile. We went to Rockfield, which is an amazing studio, and when Ian left, Sean worked with Steve Harris, the engineer, on Pauline and Water.”
Although Payne has left The Zutons since Harding spoke to The Yorkshire Post, the band is heading out on a UK tour this month. “I can’t wait, we love playing live,” she said. “It’s something that we live for, it’s something that we think we’re good at, we’re all good players and we put on a good show.”
The Zutons play at Leeds University Stylus on Thursday April 3. https://thezutons.com/