Mick Hucknall: an old flame

“The obligation to sing the same hits again and again at every gig began to get me down,” recalls Mick Hucknall, the curly-haired redhead who shook off his motherless youth in 1985 with “Holding Back the Years” and got under the skin of the whole planet with his nostalgic voice and the soft soul pop of Simply Red. The band was finally wound up three years ago. A solo career with tours that don’t last so long or take you so far was better suited to the role of family man that the once inveterate womaniser had taken on. “It would be easier to go on a world tour every three years with a greatest-hits show. I would sell more tickets and make more money, but I wouldn’t have felt good doing it any more.”

May I congratulate you? You have just recently, at the age of 52, finally managed to record a Beatles song.
Mick Hucknall: Ha ha, yeah, thanks. It was for a tribute to Please Please Me. I felt honoured, as the Beatles were, of course, the first band I listened to as a little kid and they have always been part of me. Exactly fifty years after the recording sessions for their debut album, the BBC asked a number of artists to perform a song each from that debut in the same iconic location, the legendary Abbey Road studios. It was strange, but at that moment I could feel how things must have gone there a half-century ago. The group had twelve hours to record a whole album! I was reminded too of the John Peel sessions with my first band, the Frantic Elevators. Back then we drove to London in a van too, the four of us, from roughly the same direction, sleeping alongside our instruments.

Why did you pick “Anna (Go to Him)”?
Hucknall: Because it was sung by John Lennon, with whom I have always felt a special affinity. Sometimes I think that’s because he too grew up without a mother. It was written, moreover, by the black American soul singer Arthur Alexander. My new album, American Soul, includes another song by him, “The Girl That Radiates That Charm”.

Over the last few years you have also performed with a number of Rolling Stones. It is as if there is suddenly room for your old idols.
Hucknall: That’s true. I did shows with Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings, with Ronnie Wood and the Faces, and with Charlie Watts’s boogie-woogie band. I really enjoyed soaking up the early R&B and soul material that my manager suggested and I immediately recorded some of those classics. I was already in the studio for the sessions for a new album with original material.

It is a strange mix: in between songs by Ray Charles, Etta James, and Otis Redding, there is your cover of “Hope There’s Someone” by Antony and the Johnsons.
Hucknall: The singing, in particular, is quite unusual. It was a challenge; and it allowed me, to an extent, to subvert the concept of the album, which for the most part is made up of numbers from the glory days of the crooners. Music is not like a religion. You can be creative with it. And in a certain way Antony sounds American and soulful here too.

Do you still perform Simply Red songs?
Hucknall: The show is made up for the most part of American Soul material. But as well as two brand new numbers and a few off my solo debut, Tribute to Bobby, there are two or three Simply Red songs on the set list. Even if it means we have to play in smaller venues, it all sounds really fresh, like a new start. Two guitars, keyboard, bass, and drum. Very simple and direct. Exactly what I needed.

Mick Hucknall • 2/3, 20.00, €46/49, ANCIENNE BELGIQUE, boulevard Anspachlaan 110, Brussel/Bruxelles, 02-548.24.24, info@abconcerts.be, www.abconcerts.be