Marti has landed a role in the West End musical Chicago, he will take over as Billy Flynn in June.
Marti remarked on his new stage role "I'm very excited. I'm sure I'll take to it like a duck to water....the writing's so good, it will just roll off the tongue."
""SMILE"," chuckles Marti Pellow, older, wiser and somewhat more sober than he used to be. "That's what I'm going to call my first solo album. It's quite ironic for me because I didn't smile for a while. Now, I smile an awful lot..."
Indeed, there was a time when it seemed unlikely that "SMILE" or any Marti Pellow solo album would even exist, let alone sound as inspired as it actually does.
After leaving Wet Wet Wet in May 1999, Marti Pellow's life was in personal and professional disarray. Once he had admitted himself to a programme of recovery, it was time to move on professionally.
Although the voice of Wet Wet Wet - and throughout the bad times that stunning voice never failed him - Marti was only an occasional songwriting contributor. On "SMILE" he has emerged as a composer and producer. "No one is more surprised than me," he admits. "I'd always thought that I was just a singer and that was my trade. I've been blessed with having a good ear for melody. I can hear melodies very quickly and I can improvise very well. Composing and production are both a case of knowing what goes where and when. And then getting a superb musician with a tremendous ear, such as my musical director James Hallawell, to bring their spirit to it. Mind you, I'm a nightmare to work with; I move very quickly; I'm a typical addict, I want it here and I want it now. And nobody can understand my accent."
Chris Difford, then of Squeeze, had written the excellent lyrics to Love Is My Shepherd on Wet Wet Wet's "Picture This" album. When Marti Pellow was looking for someone to put words to his own melodies, he looked no further than Deptford's finest. The two became firm friends as well as collaborators. "Personally, he's a real rock for me," explains Marti, "especially through all the bad shit of my addictions. Professionally, I wanted someone worthy of my melodies and my first choice was Chris Difford. There was no second choice. After I'd decided to go it alone I went down to his house in Rye and said, 'Look, I need you and your lyrics and I need to stay in your house. Where's me pipe and slippers?'." Marti stayed a while. The pair wrote literally hundreds of songs together, sometimes in the same room at Chris's home studio, sometimes continents apart. "I'd have a melody, he'd have a laptop and we'd be off," he purrs. "It was incredibly intimidating for anybody else to come into our songwriting circle because we work so quickly. If we started at 10, we'd have a song by 12. Not the finished article, just the underwear; we'd dress them up later."
Recorded at various locations including Marti's spiritual home, Willie Mitchell's Royal Studios in Memphis, where a distinctly damp behind the ears Wet Wet Wet had spent the memorable summer of 1986, absorbing the soul which now infuses "SMILE".
But, whether in Memphis, London or Rye, Marti Pellow thrived on the responsibility of a solo career. "Aye," he says, "it's great for me to have that passion for music again, to get back amongst it. I was always first there at whichever studio we were in, opening the doors, waiting to drag people in."
Whilst by his own admission Marti Pellow (born Mark McLachlan on March 23, 1966) was something of a studio slugabed towards the end of Wet Wet Wet, he was always the group's public face and voice. From their formation in Clydebank in 1983 as Vortex Motion who earned a crust covering Clash songs in local bars, they blossomed into one of the great British groups of the '80s and '90s. Among their 12 British Top 10 hits, they managed three Number 1 singles, "With A Little Help From My Friends", "Goodnight Girl" and their version of Reg Presley's "Love Is All Around" which was Number 1 in 15 countries and stayed at the British summit for a splendidly symmetric 15 weeks. They also had four British Number 1 albums: not bad for a singles band. "Being a pop star was everything I thought it would be and more," he says firmly. "There were screaming, adoring women everywhere, but for us it was always about music and Wet Wet Wet wrote great pop songs. When people start to look back at what we did and how we did it, they'll remember what a good group we were. I'd love to think of future generations discovering us. And they will..."
Essentially a modest sort of chap, Marti wasn't wholly sure if his old fans would still be there with the prospect of a solo tour. He thought his first solo dip in the live waters might have to take the form of a club tour. He needn't have worried and before Christmas played a sold out tour of Britain's larger venues, including two nights at the Royal Albert Hall. It was almost as if he'd never been away. "I knew I had a fully loaded gun with the Number One singles," he smiles. "But I was more apprehensive about the "SMILE" songs because there were no reference points for the audience, but it was important that I played these songs." And how did they go down? "Oh, quite well - it was great to see all the fans still there supporting me." And then he sets that massive grin free. "It was mental actually and I did it clean," he says proudly. "I toured with nothing, no drugs and no drink. Previously, I'd always thought I'd need to get fucked up to work, but I now know that's not true. I could savour the moments better and that was such a high in itself."
"SMILE" will surprise a few people and delight many more. The first single "Close To You" ("It reminds me of writing the music in Memphis and the missus on the phone going, 'Come back, you're a wee island when you get out there, the pots need washing'") and "All Around The World" with an especially personal lyric written by Marti, again in Memphis, are evidence of a burgeoning new songwriting talent. "New York Vibe" and "Moment Of Truth" which were both produced by Marti on his own show that he is a many-trick-pony. "London Life", "Hard To Cry", "Night Of A Rhythm" and the last song to be recorded, "This Moment Is OK", about white trailer trash and, says Marti, "a little bit like James Taylor" are songs that sound better with every hearing. But what links "SMILE" and makes it special is that voice. Martin Pellow, already one of Britain's finest voices, has never sung better. Understandably, he is delighted.
"In my sobriety I'm surprising myself. The things I want to achieve seem a little more clear. I would like "SMILE" to get to as many people as possible, I would like to have more Number Ones. I want it to be great, I want people to say 'Marti, that's a great album'. "I've put blood, sweat and tears into it, but I can already say what it's given me: the inspiration to get back into music and to make it my life. I've grown as a musician and as a person. I feel enthused by music, I feel alive again.
I'm the kid in a candy store; I get up in a morning and I want to go to work, I want to get involved. I want to play "SMILE" to people and get them as enthused as I am. I was in the wilderness abusing my talents, but now I'm embracing it again and I'm going from strength to strength as a musician and as a person. I want "SMILE" to have the best chance it can and I'll do whatever I need to do. Apart, of course, from going on stage with a boxing glove up my arse. "At the end of the day, I'm extremely proud of it. I don't know how that might look in print, but it's the most honest I can be."
So here he is. Focused, happy, full of great music and ready to conquer the world for a second time. "Hey, I've still got loads of problems, but it's cool with me and it's cool with the missus. I'm clean as a whistle, fighting fit and I'm looking after myself. I see myself as a long term project and I'm something that I need to address every day." Smile? He can now.
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