Farewell to Forever Exclusive Interview With Bobby Wratten

We met Bobby (and Matt) in a pub just before the Cinerama gig at the Garage on 24th February 2000. It was a rainy night (and so it should be if you ask me), and Bobby arrived late as he was coming from Surrey, where he lives, and trains were cancelled. There were already six of us sitting around the table, and we thought he was going to get really shy and escape through the back door. But he was fine (or so he said!). He's a charming person... A lovely smile and a laugh you can't easily forget. We're lucky to have a tape we can listen to again and again. Here's what he said to us:

BOBBY: Yes (laughs). Before that writing songs at home but it wasn’t in any groups.

BOBBY: I’m not so sure it were that successful (laughs). I guess you assume that at some point you’re going to get the chance to make records and someone will come along. And it was Matt… I just happened to see the first couple of Sarah releases, so I caught them when they had just started.

BOBBY: When Michael and I were at school we really liked Factory records. I always say that but it’s true: it came from there. We loved New Order and A Certain Ratio and they never bothered to do things like that. It’s really not important who plays what. Sometimes on the American releases you have to put your name because of the way they do things but that’s all.

BOBBY: Well, the Northern Picture Library is an actual building on the outskirts of Manchester. We just needed a name and we went past it on the bus one day and we thought :’that’s sounds quite good!’ Mark who is in the group wanted a long name so it fitted. Trembling Blue Stars is from a book [The Story of O by Pauline Reage- The classic erotic novel, relates the love of a beautiful Parisian fashion photographer for Rene. As part of that intense love, she demands debasement and severe sexual and pychological tests]: again it’s the same situation, I didn’t have a name! And The Field Mice, well… it’s just the FM, it was just a mistake (laughs).

BOBBY: When the FM I wouldn’t have carried on using the name. That was the end of that and the five people just went their separate ways. We needed a new name just then, that is me, Mark and Annemari and the NORTHERN PICTURE LIBRARY just fizzled out. As soon as I wanted to do something else, I started with a new name. If I have called NORTHERN PICTURE LIBRARY Mark wouldn’t have been very happy. It was a new thing.

BOBBY: No! I don’t normally do it, obviously. If you were there you would have noticed I couldn’t remember it. We decided to do it a minutes before that happened and I couldn’t remember how it went! I never play FM songs and if I don’t play songs I can’t really remember how they go. I’m trying to learn all the TBS songs at the moment because we’re doing a gig. No, we’re not going to do any more FM songs [OH, NO!!!]

BOBBY: The writers I like… Um, a Japanese writer, Banana Yoshimoto- she has written four books, I think, and I really like what she does. The Francoise Sagan book that the title of the new album is taken from (A Certain Smile) is great. I don’t know all her stuff but I’ve read her first couple of books. I also like Dorothy Parker. As for musical stuff… Well, at the moment I like Yo La Tengo a lot, I always liked Galaxy 500, I really like Jeff Buckley [surprise!]. Yeah, I was a big fan and went to see him too. I like Broadcast and other people who are around at the moment. But I also like Billie Holiday and things like that. As for more dancey stuff, when New Order started, well, a lot came from there. I also listen to WARP, to some compilations I found recently - so I don’t really know what I’m listening to! (laughs) That’s the dance music that I like, dance music that you can’t dance to really…

We noticed that the new album Broken By Whispers is more song-based than the previous one. How come?

BOBBY: I think even the dancier songs on the previous albums were still songs. I write the songs and then work them out with Michael so they’re pretty established by the time we went into the studio. I guess we kept a lot of the guitars in this time- whereas before we were taking the guitars out and replace them with things! It’s mainly acoustic guitars.

BOBBY: Believe it or not, when it came out we didn’t actually say anything about it. I did an interview for Melody Maker and I told them it was true and that was it. [I mention the Time Out review of the new album, where his relationship with Annemari gets more attention than the actual songs]: That’s what we get all the time now. I don’t really mind. See, I’ve written all these songs about her and it would be silly to say ‘Why does everyone ask me about Annemari?’ But I still check with her some times because some of the questions are really personal- so I ask her ‘Do you mind me answering this?’ and she says ‘No, it’s fine’. I mean, we’re really good friends now and it’s strange because when we (me and Annemari) talk about it it’s like talking about these two other people- it’s slightly unreal! I don’t mind too much, no.

BOBBY: As long as there are people who see things in the songs that they can relate to then that’s really good. It means it’s not just about me and my little problems and nobody could care less. That means there is a general point being made in the song that people can understand; or else it’s, as I said, about me and things that only I can understand. I like that, when people say ‘I understand what this song is about’, I think that’s great, I’m not wasting my time! But it’s still a by-product of the whole thing, I don’t do it deliberately.

BOBBY: (laughs) Um, I still like chocolate! That’s just something we just used in the samples of a song ["Humblebee" out of Skywriting], it wasn’t exactly the Field Mice way of life (laughs). But, you know, they’re OK, I’m sure there are worst things in life!