MacD on Music: The Song Is Nearly Over

Over the years, I’ve gotten to speak to a lot of music legends thanks to this column. People like Peter Cunnah, Moving Hearts saxophone player Keith Donald and Crash Test Dummies singer Brad Roberts, people whose music we’ve known and loved for years.

Today, I’m talking to another legend, Stuart Bailie, a man who has been on the frontline for decades with his work for the likes of NME. He’s done it all, from plane rides with U2 to seeing John Cale playing with Patti Smith, and his new book ‘The Song Is Nearly Over’ chronicles it all.

I got a chat with Stuart recently to talk about his book ahead of the launch in Seamus Heaney HomePlace on the 19th this month (where he’ll be in conversation with Stephen McCauley).

We started with what inspired him to finally put his story on paper: “People have been asking me for years to put all the stories in a book and it never felt like the right time. Now, it just suddenly felt like, before you get run over by a bus or lose your faculties, get them all out there.

"That was about six or seven months ago, I just thought, knuckle down and I spent three or four months pulling all the stories together, pulling bits of paper out of filing cabinets, transcribing tapes and before you know it you’ve got a fairly substantial book and a wee record for my family to say here’s what I did, here’s my adventures when there was money about, when the music press was powerful and you could do what you wanted to do. You had amazing access to people you admired, and you could hang out with them. It was great.”

“I think there were about fifty stories from the last forty years in the book, and some of the stuff that didn’t make it made me cringe. There’s some terrible pieces of writing out there. We’ve all done things in a hurry or that we didn’t really connect with and they’re awful, but before I knew it, I thought there’s me hanging around with Radiohead around the time of ‘OK Computer’ and there’s me sitting down with Patti Smith, so I was quite proud to read some of the pieces.

"For the introduction, I had to sit down and take stock of my life, which was a strange thing to do, and work out, in retrospect, what the journey was about. At the time, obviously, you’re just winging it. You’re in London with a typewriter under your arm going ‘What am I going to do next?’. I came away thinking that was an interesting life. I gave it a good roll. I connected with London, and I connected with musicians at a really interesting time.”

I asked him about any forgotten moment that came back during the writing process: “Every now and again there’s descriptions of things where you go ‘Really?’. There’s a bit where I interview Patti Smith, then I talk about the gig and there’s Tom Verlaine from Television and John Cale on stage with her in the band and I was going ‘Did that really happen?’. There’s times I had to pinch myself.”

READ MORE: MacD on Music

“There’s the time I was on the plane with U2 around the time of ‘Achtung Baby’. It wasn’t really an interview; it was just me writing down everything that happened over two or three days. You just think that was nuts. I felt very glad that my job involved making a record of things, then you go back, and you go ‘there’s the record’. Sometimes you got it terribly wrong, but a lot of the time it was just ‘here it is’. Here’s a viewpoint you won’t see very often. That’s what I saw and that’s what I heard. That’s worth having.”

Finally, I asked about anyone he hasn’t got to work with over the years (yet, at least): “I’ve never interviewed Van Morrison. I’ve been stood up a couple of times, but I’ve bumped into him socially a few times. I think, maybe in the scale of things, it’s best that I’ve not spent a lot of time with him. Maybe it would damage my enjoyment of his music, but if he rang me up tomorrow, I’d say ‘Yep. Surely. You name the time and the place’.”

“I’ve never interviewed Lou Reed. I’d seen him play live, and I’d seen him in conversation a few times which was incredible, but I think I’ve had more than my fair share of great names. Putting together the book, there were actually three or four things that I didn’t have room for, but I think from Primal Scream in Japan to Radiohead and Nina Simone, I think I’ve had a good run.”

And that’s it from Stuart Bailie. His book ‘The Song Is Nearly Over’ is out now and can be bought in Little Acorns Bookstore, along with signed copies of his book Trouble Songs. He’ll be in conversation with Stephen McCauley in Seamus Heaney HomePlace on February 19th. Tickets are £12 and can be bought at seamusheaneyhome.com.

Stuart can also be found on Instagram @stu_bailie.