Man From Delmonte - Interview

  by Dixie Ernill

published: 1 / 2 / 2025

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Article

Whilst lying on a beach in Crete in late September 2024 I managed to bag some tickets for the most anticipated Manchester band reunion gig of 2025. It was only later that day that I realised how fortunate I’d been when I learned that the gig had sold out in less than 20 minutes. Thankfully this wasn’t for Oasis but for the far more important (IMHO) The Man From Delmonte who have a agreed to reform for a gig at the historic Manchester venue Band on the Wall in February. I had first been introduced to the band’s music back in the late 1980s by a friend and, despite being impressed by what I heard (at the time The Housemartins’ ‘Happy Hour’ sprang to mind), somehow I didn’t go to see them play live - which seems unforgivable now. I did buy some of their records and then they split up. Circa 10 years later Vinyl Japan released a compilation of most of the band’s recorded material and the CD remains a regular companion on car journeys to this day. So how did this reunion come about? Was it the lure of a nostalgic yearning to recapture their youth or was it the promise of riches beyond the band’s wildest dreams? The truth was almost a work of fiction. A funny bloke called Iain Lee, who I used to see on TV about 25 years ago knocking about with Daisy Donovan and Ali G, was/is the driving force behind it. I asked Iain how he got involved and he advised “I’m not sure. I mentioned it to Martin (Vincent, the band’s guitarist) ages ago when I saw him post on The Man From Delmonte Facebook page. He didn’t seem keen. I started talking to Julian West, Mike’s son (Mike West is the band’s singer/songwriter and guitarist), and he had been nudging his dad for years to reform. Everyone was hesitant because they all thought the others wouldn’t want to do it. I guess I just said the right combination of words at the right time. I still can’t believe it’s happening.” A real pinch me moment for Iain and brought back memories for me of early in 2013 when I, amongst others, was trying to cajole Davey Woodward into reforming The Brilliant Corners to play live and after a while got a short email that simply read ‘rehearsal went well last night. We are on board’ – cue dancing round the room! I was intrigued as to how Iain, residing down south, had first come across the band and he enlightened me thus:- “I was 14 and a half. Me and my friend Malcolm travelled to London to the London Central Poly. We were there to see our hero Frank Sidebottom. It was one hell of a line-up for a first gig including Pete Shelley and Ed Tudor-Pole. I knew nothing about The Man From Delmonte. However, when they strode on I was instantly curious. All beautiful, yet odd looking people. Mike was incredibly striking with his hair and attitude. Some of my favourite bass players are women – Carol Kaye, Kim Deal and Suzi Quatro, so I was instantly smitten. Martin had great hair and even greater shirts and Howard(Goody) didn’t look like a drummer, which instantly made him cool to me. The second they started I loved them. And then as soon as Roxy (Walsh) came on and started playing the trombone on ‘(Will Nobody Save) Louise?’, I knew they were MY band. I think that’s also the gig that Jon Ronson first saw them.” It’s amazing how the bands you connect to in your youth seem to create the greatest impression and stay with you. As an avid music fan I have consumed so much music over the years and whilst there have been some incredible bands and songs in more recent times, it is the artists I first encountered in the mid to late ‘80s that have really resonated. Maybe it’s those late teenage years when you absorb things most readily, with a world of possibility still stretching out in front of you. Maybe that’s the same reason that the excitement explodes for reunions such as this – a chance to time travel for an hour or so. Iain also admits to having been a fan of Jason Donovan at the time he first encountered The Man From Delmonte, so maybe my theory isn’t true after all. Regardless, that fact that Iain is making this possible is a wonderful thing and I, for one, salute him. Winding the clock back I was keen to learn how The Man From Delmonte first came into being back in 1987 and bassist Sheila Seal provided her own back story leading up to her first meeting with Mike:- “Before the band I’d studied music in Glasgow and came down to Manchester in 1981 with my new husband, Peter, (who was coming to do an MA in Fine Art) to the RNCM to do a postgrad in performance. Once I finished that, I didn’t really want to pursue a classical performing career, didn’t want to teach and wasn’t sure what to do next. I liked the company of the artist friends more than the classical music friends, so I hung out with them. A load of them were just finishing BAs or MAs in Fine Art at what was Manchester Polytechnic, and there was a lot of energy around the idea of creating a space for artists to keep working. So I became involved in Manchester Artists’ Studio Association, and then through that, helped to set up and establish Castlefield Gallery, which, amazingly, is still going strong, 40 years later! I remember being in the Castlefield Gallery when Mike came in and was looking for work. We didn’t have any money to pay anyone but he came and did some voluntary work and we got on really well. I already knew Martin through the art world and had always wanted to play bass guitar, so we three had the idea to start a band. I can remember being in the Old Garrett pub at the bottom of Granby Row where we used to go a lot, and saying to my friend Rachel - we need a drummer, to which she said her then boyfriend Howard was a drummer, so I guess that’s how it started! Peter and I lived at the time, in the Lock Keepers Cottage down by the canal in Castlefield, which was a really different place then. I have some photos. There were no bars, no high rises, only a scrapyard, a wood yard and a garage. It was an amazing place to live and the band used to practie there because there was nobody around to bother about the noise!” Mike, was also not a native Mancunian. Australian by birth he had moved up to Manchester from Reading having thankfully not succeeded as a chef in a restaurant there. His recollection of events ties in with Sheila’s - “I moved to Manchester without knowing a soul. I volunteered at the Castlefield gallery (an artist-run gallery on Deansgate) just to get me out of my slightly depressing flat in Gorton. Sheila ran the gallery. She was learning bass guitar and getting together with Martin just to play and figure out the bass. I asked if I could come along. I said I wrote songs. Sheila said that was good, because they didn't have any. We got together and decided we should form a band. We needed a drummer. Someone said, ‘I think Rachel's boyfriend plays drums’ That was Howard. The rest is history.” The formation of the band fitted in with one of the most vibrant periods of guitar music. Like The Beatles in the 1960s, The Smiths had made being in a melodic guitar band popular again in the mid 1980s and Manchester along with Glasgow and Bristol was one of the places to be. Mike remembers the time well “The Stone Roses were one of the first bands I saw when I moved to Manchester. This was long before they had any commercial success. I thought they were an inspiringly good band. They lit a fire in me. James were a popular and extremely good band long before they had hits and Tim Booth was a generous and kind mentor to me. James gave our band some of our best opportunities by taking us on as a support act. The Inspiral Carpets came through the same time we did, and they were just fun good people with a great sound. I honestly feel like it was a privilege to have been a small part of that time and that scene. The band far exceeded my personal expectations of what I thought I was capable of. I never thought I could be a musician and a performer. I didn't think I had that in me. 35 years on, I have been a professional working musician my whole adult life. I have the Man from Delmonte and the whole supportive and inspiring Manchester scene to thank for that. No frustrations with that time. Only gratitude. The Waltones and the Desert Wolves were totally part of our scene and generation. I went to all these kind of gigs. Guy Lovelady from Ugly Man records was helping all those bands out. The Brilliant Corners were great, and I remember going to see the Bodines. The International Club and the Boardwalk were fantastic venues. I went to see so many bands at both those places and I couldn't really believe it when I found myself playing those same venues with The Man From Delmonte.” The band’s drummer, Howard Goody, also has great affection for those halcyon days: - “The 80's indie scene was real hot bed of new and different bands from all over the country who we came across as we ploughed around virtually every student union in the country… we crossed paths with lots of brilliant bands who were just like us, rattling up and down various motorways in a transit van. Sometimes we'd bump into each other in the middle of the night at a motorway services. There were lots of Manchester-based bands too just like us who I certainly felt an affinity with, all very different with our own distinctive sound.. When the Mad-chester explosion happened we did feel a bit swamped by the way it over took us. I have to put in a word of thanks for James here who were incredibly encouraging, took us on tour many times and let us use their practice rooms”. Whilst Martin highlights a slight difference between The Man From Delmonte and some of the other bands on the scene at the time:- “We did and we didn’t (fit in with other bands). I sometimes had the feeling (rightly or not) that many bands were a bunch of lads from the same place with a shared vision, and we were a bunch of people from disparate backgrounds who, while all quite talented (imho!), only fitted together by accident. But in retrospect we were comrades with those other bands. There’s a shared history. One of the pleasures of this unexpected reboot is reconnecting with some of the people we knew back then, and I don’t think I put enough value on those things at the time.” The band were gigging constantly and Mike was churning out an endless succession of catchy earworms at a rate that their record releases couldn’t keep up with. In these modern times the band could literally have released a great digital single ever couple of weeks, but instead it was just three singles, two EPs and a live album across four glorious years. A studio album never materialised as Mike explains:- “Jon Ronson (manager) was negotiating a studio album deal with Bop Cassettes, and it almost happened but relationships were shifting and people's lives were changing and somehow it didn't happen. No-one's fault.” Martin adds:- “Mike just seemed to become more and more prolific and the quality was high. There was more new material than we could keep up with. If we’d managed to record a first album, the second album would not have been a problem.” And Howard too thinks an album could easily have happened:- “It's a mystery to me as well that we didn't release a studio album as we seemed to be constantly recording new stuff. Mike seemed to have new material coming out of his ears. There was never a shortage of new songs to work on.” On the subject of the stockpile of unreleased songs from back in the day, Mike opens up:- “That's a hard question. I haven't even thought about these songs in 35 years. It's interesting revisiting them. You hear all your own shortcomings and how you could have perhaps worked a little harder at writing better. But then, I was 23 and just so excited that I could halfway do anything. I have 20 songs that I've written in the last couple of years that I'd like to put out. That's what occupies me. I guess I'm always looking ahead, so it's probably good for me to have to revisit a bit of my past. It's not something I naturally do. I've been writing songs since I was 13, and I continue to do so. I'm a lifer. In fact I just released a new record recently, a collaboration with a Canadian songwriter, Nick Broster... ‘Broster & West’. Sounds like a kitchen appliance! It's actually a lovely record. I think I will write songs and music until my synapses really start misfiring. Maybe I won't even stop then.” All the members of the band were humbled by the incredible response to the upcoming re-union that has gathered pace now with the addition of a few more gigs. Howard sums it up well:- “I was jaw-droppingly shocked when I realised who Iain actually was and totally stunned by the reaction to the gigs and the ticket sales.” And Sheila rightly concurs:- “I was totally surprised and absolutely amazed at what’s happened since! I had no idea this would create such a wonderful buzz. What an amazing bunch of people our fans are! Iain’s been great and is putting so much work into this, just for the love of it. Big shout hurray for Iain.” While Mike shed’s some light onto the background of him agreeing to the reunion:- “That was a complete surprise. I've never had any interest in a reunion gig before. As I said, I don't like looking back. But my eldest daughter, Sadie Capps, and my son, Julian West, are in an extremely good band together called The Mudd Club (https://www.themuddclubband.com), and they became fascinated with The Man From Delmonte. I think they lit some small fires here and there and helped spark some interest. They also made me more open to the idea of a reunion. So when Iain reached out, my attitude had changed and I thought it would be whimsical and fun to do something with Howard and Martin and Sheila after all these years. And more importantly, my kids would be thrilled. I thought playing for 100 people at a small venue would be a realistic ambition. I think the whole band was shocked when the Band on the Wall sold out in a matter of minutes. It was very touching and unexpected that Iain was enthused enough about the band and our songs to put in all the effort of pursuing the reunion idea and then promoting the show.” The reunion fever has gathered pace, with more gigs lined up and a re-issue of the compilation album and the live album already out there, but the last burning question is will the band be recording anything new? The answer seems to be positive:- Mike: “I would be very open to doing ongoing work, releases and writing with the band. As long as it's fun for everyone. I don't want anyone feeling like they have to do any of it. But if it's fun and not stressful, why not? I do music every day anyway. More music is more music. And Sheila, Howard and Martin are exceptional and lovely people to know and work with. I would be happy to do more with them.” Martin: “All those things might be possible. I’d be very interested to hear what Mike would write now for the band. At this point (14 November 2024) we haven’t even been in the same room together for decades. If it’s fun for all of us we’ll do it. I can only imagine what it will sound like. The vibe I’m aiming for is like when ‘Twin Peaks’ came back after 25 years – exciting, disturbing and confusing in equal parts. The others will have different ideas.” Sheila: “I don’t know yet if there could be more life in this - think it will depend on how the rehearsals go and how everyone feels……I would be up for doing more writing/recording, but Mike has always been the one with the lyrics and starting point, so it would totally depend on him. We’re scattered geographically now and we all have families/jobs/life to get on with……” And so here we are starting a new year with a blank page already filing up with links to the past and hope for the future. Roll on February!

Band Links:-

https://www.facebook.com/groups/448002
https://www.instagram.com/the_man_from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_

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