Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby made their names separately as writers of witty pop songs. Then, years later, they got married, writes TONY CLAYTON-LEA
HE HAS ALWAYS been viewed as the runt of the punk rock litter, the guy who likes a post-prandial port, the casually together performer responsible for such minor classic hits as Whole Wide World, Veronica, Reconnez? Cherieand The Final Taxi. He was born in Sussex, England, in 1954. His name is Eric Goulden.
She is a singer-songwriter with a power pop pedigree, a reputation as a tough cookie with a sentimental streak, a surefire songwriter for hire, and the sexual humorist behind such songs as Are We Ever Going To Have Sex Again?and I Hate Every Bone In Her Body. She was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1959. Her name is Amy Rigby.
Eric and Amy are, to all intents and purposes, mavericks, operating under the commercial radar, each with a history of minor triumphs, each a history of personal ups and downs.
Both Eric’s and Amy’s tunes are deemed too spiky for daytime radio, and as a wild-card musical entity they are deemed too eccentric for chat shows. They are one but they’re not the same, yet marriage seems to suit them. They now live in rural France, where, each morning when it isn’t pouring with rain, Eric visits the local bakery for fresh bread. He is just back from such a short journey, and is up for chat about this and that. He is a top geezer, a highly entertaining anti-pop raconteur, and one of the growing list of performers over 50 who is finding an audience among people who like their music gritty and witty, authentic and idiosyncratic, imperfect and personable.
“My interest in writing songs in the first place,” says Eric, “stemmed from needing something to play on stage. I didn’t think you could add much of an identity to a group that played covers even if they were from the back catalogues of Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry and the like. It got to the point where after a while you were left wondering where the identity of the band was, or should be. So I started writing some songs, and that meant at least we’d have some sort of original thread running through the shows.
“Once I have a reason to write, I do so. I’m not driven by all that ‘I have something to say’ rubbish. Too many people have made songwriting into a worthy occupation. As if you’re somehow a better person for doing it. They suffer for it, and so, by God, do we. There is an awful lot of people with absolutely bugger-all to say who are, unfortunately, saying an awful lot.”
Goulden first came to prominence in the late 1970s, when as part of the Stiff Records stable (which then included Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, The Pogues, Madness, and many more), he endeared himself to many with his shambolic stage shows and his post-gig bouts of drunkenness. The drinking days have long since passed, but the creative urge remains. Apparently, he just likes “making noise”.
“What albums are to me is a really sophisticated harnessing of noise. It doesn’t matter if it’s Pete Seeger or Groove Armada it’s all the gathering of noise and the creation of an illusion. Making music is the business of illusion, like painting. I mean, those mountains aren’t really there above your fireplace, they’re on the canvas.” Quite.
As Eric rattles on, Amy Rigby is upstairs. A somewhat less dishevelled proposition than her husband, Rigby has built up an enviable reputation over the years as an exponent of the pert power pop/punk/folk tune. She had been singing Eric's Whole Wide Worldin her set for years prior to actually meeting the writer of the song. At a gig in Hull – not the best known place in the world for love stories to begin – Rigby was introduced to the man, and before you could sing Let's Go To The Pictures, they tied the knot.
“It’s pretty crazy, isn’t?” ponders Amy, “but it fits, somehow. Because neither of us has had a predictable life, in some ways it seems perfect.” The only drawback, she reveals, is that it’s slightly harder getting work done at home: she tends to view writing as a solitary process. “But it’s great to have a conspirator and companion on the road.Plus, I think we work well together live. We both bring out good things in the other person.”
Looks like the odd couple done good.
Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigbyis on release through Stiff Records. Wreckless Eric Amy Rigby perform at Crúiscín Lán in Cork tomorrow, Andrew's Lane Theatre in Dublin on Friday, and the Black Box in Belfast on Saturday
