Adrian Borland - Interview 1996

  by Adrian Janes

published: 7 / 9 / 2025

In the 1970s Adrian Borland and I were first of all school friends, then bandmates and songwriting partners in The Outsiders. At the end of the decade, that band evolved into the much more acclaimed and successful The Sound. We remained friends (and I a fan) during the next decade, even though recording and touring often took him away for extended periods. The Sound eventually split in turn, and in the 1990s Adrian embarked on a solo career. Although there are many fine songs on his solo records, the public became less and less aware of, or interested in, what he was doing, with gigs increasingly rare and his albums released on small independent labels. Adrian was always given especially strong support by his parents, a stabilising factor in his life, especially as mental illness increasingly took its toll from the mid-80s. It was in this context that his father, Bob Borland, suggested to me in 1995 that I write Adrian’s biography. Looking back, I’m not sure how seriously either of us took this idea. To do the job properly would, I knew, require a great deal of research, and in any case how much of an audience would there have been for it at that time? Nonetheless, Adrian and I met a couple of times for long taped interviews. I soon found the effort to transcribe these far too laborious, but I also don’t recall either Bob or myself thinking about hiring a professional to do the job. If he had really been committed to the book, given that he and his wife Win had previously financed some of Adrian’s solo work, I think he would have done this. In retrospect, it seems to me that the project was essentially a dream, something to give Adrian an emotional lift when his career was largely in the doldrums (as he wryly refers to here). The transcription never happened, and the notional biography just seemed to peter out. Yet it's funny how things work out. One of the positive outcomes of the Internet has been to bring music fans together internationally, while also exposing them to music they have never heard before or reminding them of bands and musicians they once loved but lost track of. Adrian and The Sound have both been deserved beneficiaries of such belated recognition. A cursory glance at the number of hits their uploaded tracks have had on YouTube is enough to confirm this. However, there is more. The Sound’s first three albums, now widely regarded as post-punk essentials, were reissued last year. Also in 2024, ‘Destiny Stopped Screaming’, an excellent biography of Adrian by Simon Heavisides, was independently published by long-term fan Jean-Paul van Mierlo, who had also previously produced the biographical film 'Walking In The Opposite Direction’. It marked 25 years since Adrian’s suicide. Among Simon’s sources were those tapes we made so long before, at last being put to the use originally envisaged for them. The interview that follows is the first in a series based on the tapes, transcribed by John Clarkson plus some light editing (to aid the sense) by myself. We began with an in-depth talk about what at that point (1996) was Adrian’s latest album, ‘Cinematic’. However, our conversation (probably a more appropriate word than interview) touched on a number of other topics, and as the series progresses you will find that we roamed over Adrian’s entire career as well as his reflections on various other subjects. In view of their recent reunion, it’s amusing to see here what Adrian had to say about Oasis at the very time they were riding the Britpop wave. Although the main audience will surely be fans of Adrian, the picture that emerges of a dedicated musician and songwriter will hopefully intrigue and move others to whom he is just a name. Remember that we spoke at a time when he was largely forgotten by the music business, yet still his passion and urge to create continued. If only he had lived a few more years, to thrive in the age of the Internet and nostalgia tours… Still, cliché though it is to say, his music (and his words) live on. 20th March 1996 JAN: Is there any kind of concept linking the songs on ‘Cinematic’? AB: Yeah, there is. When I started writing ‘Cinematic’, it was just going to be a collection of songs. It was the middle of 1994 just after ‘Beautiful Ammunition’, and I started writing again, and I thought, “This is a bit aimless. It is just another bunch of songs. It might be nice to do something more interesting this time.” I had written ‘Long Dark Train’, and I had written a few other things and ‘Antarctica’ as well, which had a more atmospheric approach. JAN: Were they just separate songs at this stage? AB: Yes. I wouldn’t say necessarily that it is a concept album, but after I wrote the song ‘Cinematic’ I realised that I could tie everything together. The clue, the key to it is in the line “It’s been a hundred years,” because what I am doing is touching on things that have happened in the last hundred years. Obviously the invention of the cinema is one of the main things, but I also touch on different events, although sometimes maybe in a very oblique way. JAN: What kind of events? AB: Key events in the way that you might look back on the 20th Century and think of certain moments as being important. For example, ‘Western Veil’ looks at women rising above something in search of the truth. That is linked with when they first got the vote in 1928. And ‘Long Dark Train’ is a metaphor for the contemporary political situation in this country, but it is also a metaphor for Germany in 1935. The music as well invokes that. It is deliberately grainy, black-and-white. JAN: Like the old films of the concentration camps... AB: Yeah, the train rolls along. but people can’t get off it. It is a metaphor for the way that I look at our wonderful contemporary government. It is the same idea, just in a less extreme form. The idea behind it is that, like the Holocaust victims on trains going to concentration camps, we are being taken along in a direction that certainly not all of us, most of us didn’t want to go. It is not a historical album as such, but I wanted to use different elements of history to reflect on life, ‘Bright White Light’ also touches on Hiroshima, but it is primarily about how cities have grown so much that the sodium on streetlights now competes with the stars. In some big cities you can’t see the stars anymore because the street lighting is so strong. ‘Night Cascade’ is about that too, but it is also a celebration of mundanity. The song is actually about two people on the town. JAN: Compared with Sound songs like ‘Red Paint’ and ‘Missiles’, to read the lyrics of your solo albums, they would appear to be more inward-looking. Are you saying then that ‘Cinematic’ is much more engaged with the world? AB: It is, much more than ‘Beautiful Ammunition’ was. That was inward, I think. The first person on some of the songs on ‘Cinematic’ isn’t actually me. ‘When Can I Be Me’ is a woman singing, I mean I am singing on it, and there is a backing vocal that is female, but it is written from a woman’s point of view, I give it away in the chorus when I sing “She says”, but that is stepping outside the character of the song. The chorus is observational, but the verses are those of a female and how she feels underneath things. JAN: You have, however, said before that when you write it is always personal. AB: Yeah, it is a departure for me from that with this album. JAN: You are trying to branch out with ‘Cinematic’ from the way that you have written before then? AB: Exactly. I am aware that I might disappoint hardline environmentalists there, but the character on ‘Bright Light White’ isn’t really me either. It is written from a considered point of view. It is someone who is saying, “You are throwing it all away, using up all the good things,” and who takes quite a hardline stance on the second verse - “The sun doesn’t shine here/It just signifies the day/We take life for granted/And we throw this world away.” JAN: Why would it upset environmentalists? They would surely agree with that. AB: Yeah, they would agree with that, but it might upset them to meet me and to learn that I am taking on a role there. It is not necessarily one of my main concerns. I am not a hardline feminist either – you know me – but I do see points of view within it. I am left-wing, but I am not hardline this or that. I am very down the middle in a lot of my views, but I do see those points of view and they interest me and that is why they are on the album. I wanted to take extreme points of view to create a kaleidoscopic view of where the twentieth century is going, and to examine the way in which people take up extreme views on things as well. In the past people’s heroes have tended to be historical figures, and those historical figures have literally stood up and fought for them. With cinema, though, you can have a celluloid hero who has never done anything really. He may be a fictional character who has taken a momentary heroic stance or something. JAN: Like James Dean perhaps.. AB: Yeah, or maybe James Bond might be someone’s hero. In other words, people are getting influenced by what they see in the cinema, and maybe feel closer to what it takes to take an extreme position and stand by it. Who knows what effect cinema is having deep down on the psyche of people? If you are in a relationship you might compare it subconsciously or even consciously with some screen relationship you have seen. You might compare it to ‘Love Story’ or ... .JAN: That is often the argument that people have with cinema, isn’t it? It can be about censorship or pornography or violence. AB: I am not personally going to say that if you see a violent film you will commit a violent act. I don’t personally see it as strongly as that. People will always be influenced by what they see around them, but seeing a violent act doesn’t turn you into a violent person. There are more subtle ways in which you might be influenced by cinema, and more interesting ways than violence. That is what interests me, the more subtle things that are going on often subconsciously You ever got that feeling when you walk out of a cinema and your view of the world has changed, even for a little while? JAN: Yeah. That is the point of going, I think. AB: You have been in the dark theatre and then you see the sunlight again, and you are still carrying an echo with you in your mind so consciously it might affect the next thing that you try and do in your life JAN: Do you want your songs to have that kind of effect on people? AB: They have already done. That has happened in the past with some people and The Sound. I have had that reaction before from people, who will play ‘Winning’ to themselves when they are feeling down or will listen to it on their headphones when they are going to see their sister in hospital or something. They are playing ‘Winning’ for themselves. I have had that kind of experience, with my songs possibly inspiring them or helping them out. I am maybe backing away from that with ‘Cinematic’ and viewing things in a more objective way, so that it will be harder for people to do that, but, having said that, I do know two girls who say they love ‘When Can I Be Me’ because they say it sums up their whole relationship (Laughs). JAN: With ‘Cinematic’, are you moving away then from saying so directly that “This is how I feel”. AB: Yes, ’Spanish Hotel’, which is another example of that, is a metaphor for cocaine addiction. I nearly put that in the first person as well, but I didn’t purely because it didn’t sound as good in ‘I’. It sounded better in the accusative. JAN: If someone is a junkie, they are maybe not going to have that level of objectivity about the situation. AB: Maybe (Laughs). It was a musical thing though. JAN: With ‘Cinematic’, how do you feel it relates music-wise to your previous solo albums? It seems to me that there is a move back to making it a rockier album. AB: Yeah, the idea was to get back to a more electric sound. ‘Beautiful Ammunition’(NB Adrian’s third solo album, released in 1994) wasn’t an acoustic album, It was meant to have added-on electric guitar. That was the idea though with songs like ‘Simple Little Love’ and ‘Rocket’, to make them acoustic. It was meant to be as plaintive as possible, as close as I could get to Ralph McTell or something like that (Laughs). I am trying to do more with atmosphere. I think that ‘Cinematic’ hints at that more than the other solo albums, this kind of meeting of songs and atmosphere. That is what is driving me on at the moment. The reason why I haven’t quit yet is that I haven’t quite done it, but if I do it on the next album I will retire (Laughs). I am aiming for a meeting of sounds, content, context, lyrics and melody, all those things working at one with each other. Not many bands do that. If you take a band like Oasis or Blur or any of the new in-your-face British pop bands, what they are tending to do is put the immediacy of what they want to say melodically before any other consideration. With Oasis, it is which steal it is (Laughs). You have to work out which song they have stolen from. It is a very basic guitar on a full power sound which is basically ’Never Mind the Bollocks’ with some more twiddly bits on it, which makes it even worse, doesn’t it? (Laughs). It is that full-on sound. That is what Oasis is all about with a simple melody. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, it is very hit-and-miss with those bands. I am not blaming them. They can do what they want. I am not putting them down, although I don’t like Oasis that much. I just don’t see them as very relevant. JAN: I am interested in the difference between what they are doing and what you are aspiring to do. AB: What I am trying to do is total music, where everythin0g bounces off everything else, where a line in the lyrics can be given a subtle hint with the music behind it. I am getting more and more towards that. JAN: What would you say is closest to that ideal of what you have done? AB: On ‘Cinematic’ you mean? JAN: Yeah. AB: ‘Neon and Stone’, for example. It feels that there is a grinding-on quality there, and there is also a sort of sadness as well. Music is hard to explain. That is why I write music. And ‘Long Dark Train’ as well, where atmosphere is adding to a sense of foreboding. Music is actually adding to the foreboding. That is where the lyrics then come in. They have to complement and marry the music. JAN: This probably ties in: when you first went solo, the sound you had on ‘Alexandria’ (NB Adrian’s first solo album, released in 1989) was quite a contrast to The Sound with its use of strings and acoustics. AB: It actually sounded quite happy for me, that album. JAN: Was it a conscious attempt to break with the past or was it a natural evolution? AB: I think that it was a break with the past. The Sound would probably have adapted to those songs. You would have proba0bly then been looking at another new phase of The Sound. Then we would have shed off another load of fans who had just got into ‘Thunder Up’(NB The Sound’s final album, released in 1987), but I have always done that. It is a bit like being on a rodeo staying with me. I have always said that anyone who went the distance with me, who genuinely liked everything, would be a very interesting person. You would have really to be me, I think. to go the distance (Laughs). When The Sound split and I went solo, I thought why carry on if I am going to sound like The Sound again? I really genuinely thought that I had to be different, but at the same time I wondered what would have happened if The Sound had been given those songs on ‘Alexandria’. We might have all sat around together and decided, “Yes. Let’s make an orchestral, lush album.” It would have been The Sound but it would have been a different Sound. JAN: On the other hand, things like ‘You’ve Got a Way’ and ‘Barria Alta’ on ‘Thunder Up’ were going towards an orchestral approach. AB: The main difference with ‘Alexandria’ was the tone of it. It had a slightly lighter optimistic tone compared to the heavier, more thoughtful stuff The Sound did. I am not saying ‘Alexandria’ is not thoughtful, but it is more deliberately pop than The Sound ever were. If you take something like ‘Rogue Beauty’, you couldn’t imagine The Sound ever writing something like that. JAN: So did you feel much different yourself at that stage or was it an effort of will? AB: No, it wasn’t an effort of will. I have always been quite an optimistic person. It was only a question of drawing upon that side of myself rather than the other one. You should never really think of an artist by what they have created. You could have met comedians like Tony Hancock, and they were probably already sitting around feeling suicidal. You may have wondered why they make such great comedy if they were so suicidal. At the same time you could have met what you might regard as really serious artists or philosophers like Sartre probably getting pissed in the corner of the room and talking about his latest fuck or something, and it would be nothing to do with what you thought of as Jean-Paul Sartre. I know this girl, not a girlfriend, but just a girl from a small Belgian town. Having spent a week here with me in London, and hearing me say that I had never read a book in my life apart from the ones that I had to read in school – that is not actually true anymore – she met two of my fans. They were sa0ying that Adrian Borland must read Sartre and stuff like that, and she laughed and said, “This isn’t true. He goes to football matches and down the pub a lot. He just writes what he likes and doesn’t think about it much actually,” which is true. I think that it is interesting when people expect you to be a very doomy person and you’re not. They think that you’re faking it, and you are not. Everyone is very complicated and multi-faceted, so to draw on one side of yourself is not a lie. It is not fakery. A German journalist came after me after I wrote ‘Halcyon Days’ and said, “How could you do this? How could you write such a happy pop song. How could you sell out?” And I said, “No, I genuinely meant it.” He was, however, objecting to the decision to record it. ‘Shock of Daylight’ (NB The Sound’s 1984 mini-album) and ‘Alexandria’ are very close to each other. They are deliberate attempts to move away from something that I had been tagged with, and then we gradually gravitated back to the core of what we were doing by ‘Thunder Up’ again. In other words, we were dragged back to something which was The Sound, but ‘Shock of Daylight’ and ‘Alexandria’ were attempts by me to say, “Hey, no. There is more to it than that. We are not just this. There is more to it.” JAN: With the example of this German guy, do you think that with The Sound or yourself that there is some kind of restrictive image that you have had to live up to or have to live up to nowadays, or are you totally free of it now? AB: I think that you are freer as you become less popular. That is what frees you. You are freer through obscurity, aren’t you? The bigger you get the more people think of you as something. I think most of us think of Bono as something. A lot of people hate him but they probably wouldn’t hate him if they met him. They hate an idea of him. They maybe hate his holier-than-thou, self-reverence. But now he has decided to break away from that. He has smashed that down, and people don’t know what to make of him. If they still don’t like him, they can say that he is a crackpot or a maniac. You can never get beyond what people think of you anyway. We live in a very celebrity-orientated world. You get to see what Sly Stallone thought of something or you get to see what Princess Diana thought maybe,, but you don’t get to hear what the guy who is sleeping under the Charing Cross Arches thinks very much. People only care about you when you are successful, they make up their mind about you then, so the less successful you are, like me now sliding into obscurity (Laughs) - hopefully not completely - but then the pressure’s off. JAN:: So, do you feel that your solo albums have been as pure a thing as you would like to make or have they been restricted in some way? AB: No, I do what I want really. I always did anyway. The Sound always did what they wanted. That was the great thing about it. Bands which were more successful than us can look back on their first few albums and really hate them because they were so untrue to what they are about, but I can only look back and think, “I am really glad that we did that. I don’t care how many it sold .” I did at the time, but in the passing of time, you can only be glad that ‘From the Lion’s Mouth’ exists really, (NB The Sound’s 1981 album) but you never compromised. The music business hated us. They always wanted us to put more commercial twists on it, but we said, “That is going to detract from what we are about. Don’t detract from what we are about!” There was mass silence, and then they said, “We are going to drop you then,” and we went, “Fair enough!”. JAN: It wasn’t that radical, was it? AB: No, it wasn’t that radical. But it was true to what we wanted to do, to be true to yourself doesn’t mean that you have to be in a Neu! band. To be true to yourself means that you are true to yourself. It could be that Gary Glitter is being true to himself as well. He made all those pop singles. Maybe that is what he wanted to do as well, it doesn’t mean that you have to be avant-garde. The Sound was pretty pure. That is why people still admire it. PHOTO CREDITS Top photo: Wim Langohr Middle sheet of pictures: Emily Hobbs Lower photo: David Hawkins

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