I’ve come back to music again after 40 years

You would think the star of Doctor Who and The Devil’s Hour would be used to time looping back upon itself.

But as Peter Capaldi prepares to launch his first album with indie label Last Night From Glasgow, it’s hard not to hear the echoes of the music he played in the city in the late 70s and early 80s.

As a student at Glasgow School of Art, he fronted punk band The Dreamboys in a line-up which included another actor on drums, Craig Ferguson.

“Like a lot of kids in the 70s, I was in a band,” he says.

“As long as you were committed to the idea, it was quite easy to do. You borrowed instruments, you borrowed an amp, recorded yourself live and took a cassette round local pubs to persuade them to listen, and give you a gig.

“Glasgow was a great city to be in, full of places to play and there were so many great bands around. I remember seeing Simple Minds but we were never that successful and we all went our separate ways.”

Music was always a passion but it was acting which took precedence as Capaldi moved to London and appeared in a string of films including Local Hero, The Lair of the White Worm, Dangerous Liaisons, and television shows such as The Thick of It and Dr Who, where he famously launched into a guitar solo in his first episode as the Time Lord.

“I was never a great player, I didn’t spend all that time writing and I wasn’t the guy who brought a guitar to a party and got everyone to sing songs but I was always keen on it,” he says.

But that changed a few years ago when he met Robert Howard – aka Dr Robert of the 80s band The Blow Monkeys.

“He’s fantastic, he IS the guy at the party with the guitar,” he says.

“He has a beautiful voice and he can play anything and he encouraged me to play, and then to start writing stuff, just to see where that would go.”

The result was Capaldi’s first album St Christopher, released in 2021, and that set in motion a return to Glasgow for the latest release, Sweet Illusions.

Dr Robert had signed to a small Glasgow indie label which was set up by Ian Smith in 2016.

Last Night From Glasgow (LNFG) takes its name from a line in ABBA’s song Super Trouper – “I was sick and tired of everything, when I called you last night from Glasgow.”

Ian, despite not working in the industry before then, was similarly fed-up with the way musicians were treated.

“The music industry doesn’t care about musicians, it’s all about making a profit. We wanted to change that,” he says.

He enlisted 60 friends to give £50 each to establish a not-for-profit business. Their focus was primarily unsigned artists who were paid fairly and retained their intellectual rights.

They’ve since added a strand called Past Night From Glasgow, which reissues older albums. Their first was Glasgow band The Bluebells’ 1984 debut album Sisters.

They now have around 100 artists signed to the label, with a turnover of half a million pounds a year.

“We’re not commercial, we don’t pursue profit and any money we do make is put back into grassroots talent,” Ian says.

Peter Capaldi may not be a grass-roots performer but his music has intrigued customers in LNFG’s headquarters and shop in the Hidden Lane quarter in the Finnieston area of Glasgow.

“We’ve been playing it in the shop most days,” Mr Smith says.

“People seem to recognise the voice, but they can’t place the singer. I say, if you can guess, you can have a free copy. Someone guessed Bob Dylan, but no-one has got it right so far.”

Capaldi is happy for his music to be enjoyed, without fuss.

The album cover for Sweet Illusions – from which the first single, Bin Night, was released last year – features Peter at a bus stop in London, thinking about home.

“I’ve come back to music again after 40 years, so it seems apt that it’s in Glasgow.”

“I’m not doing this to become a pop star. I’m not hoping to change my career. It’s just something that I really enjoy. I take it seriously in the sense that I work at it and try and develop it as a craft but I don’t expect to be at the Emmys, or to be in the charts.”

He may not have any say in that. Sweet Illusions is due for release on 28 March and with the first run of 1,200 albums already earmarked, it’s likely to score highly in both the UK vinyl and Scottish charts. The Tranent pressing plant is on standby for another order.

Capaldi says he’s already working on another album, carving time out in his acting career to write songs.

“When I was making the film The Suicide Squad in Atlanta I was there for three-and-a-half months so with all that down time, I just wrote songs,” he says. “And they were all terrible but it gave me a start and while I was there, I was able to go to Nashville and that was brilliant. It was like coming home.

“I think I just picked up where I left off 40 years ago. I often have visions of these characters in this rain-drenched, neon-lit city where there are proto goths hanging on street corners looking for something to do. It’s clearly inspired by the Glasgow I knew 40 years ago.”

And while he’s a reluctant pop star, he is enjoying performing live again.

“We did a gig about a month ago because I hadn’t done a gig for 40 years. I just wanted to see what that was like, if I could still do it, if I could even do it.

“Stand in front of a band, play in time, stay in tune. But it seemed to work, we enjoyed it.

“We were asked to play at the Belladrum Festival at the end of July, and I hope we can do a few other gigs too.”

He adds: “I know I confound people in the music business.

“I’ve been approached by a few record companies once they know someone off the telly is making music, but there are obligations attached to that which I don’t want to have.

“I want to do what I want to do, and I want to be true to whatever my music is and that’s about keeping it in a certain controllable scale.

“I don’t want to be a pop star. If people like the record, I’m thrilled and that’s a reward because it’s something I never expected to happen.”

Sweet Illusions is due for release on 28 March.