Rock
Paul Draper revisits Mansun classics on Mansun Retold and reflects on legacy, solo life and perfect pork pies
Paul Draper, the former Mansun frontman who helped define 90s Britpop, is reimagining some of the band’s most beloved tracks on his new acoustic project Mansun Retold.
Paul Draper first rose to prominence during the 90s as frontman of Britpop favourites Mansun.
After three albums and 14 consecutive top 40 singles, the group went their separate ways while recording aborted fourth record Kleptomania. Paul stepped out of the spotlight but never strayed too far from the recording studio with a behind-the-scenes move to producer, working with the likes of Skunk Anansie’s Skin and The Joy Formidable.
In 2013, fans were thrilled when he teased the possibility of kicking off a solo career, but they had to wait until 2016 for his first single, which was followed by the Spooky Action album in August 2017.
Tours and another album, Cult Leader Tactics, followed, and now Paul is back with a new passion project, revisiting some of his favourite Mansun songs to rework them with an acoustic band for the Mansun Retold album.
He spoke to ContactMusic.com to talk about the record, the chances of a Mansun reunion, his current tour revisiting the band’s singles, and the importance of high-quality pork pies.
Why come back to Mansun songs now?
The main reason is cos I wasn’t too happy with some of the original recordings. We started doing one or two tracks and thought we could put them out as B-sides on my solo stuff.
The very first track we did was Until the Next Life, the original recording on that we used synth strings and a drum machine and I wanted to get that with a proper drummer and string quartet, it worked out really well.
We didn’t want to just recreate the songs so we came up with the idea of doing it with a full acoustic band, so acoustic, guitar, acoustic bass, string quartet, and it came from there really.
We just wanted to improve on the original recordings.
Mansun Retold features three songs from Little Kix (2000) – Until the Next Life, I Can Only Disappoint U and Comes as No Surprise. You famously didn’t promote the album because you weren’t happy with it. Has this given you the chance to correct what you felt was wrong?
Yeah, very much so. Little Kix was made too commercially and I wanted to put the record straight on those songs and I think they’ve turned out really well.
Comes as No Surprise and Until the Next Life were two of my favourite songs that I ever did and I don’t think the original recordings were great on that album and I wanted to get them right, I think I’ve done them some justice even if it’s 25 years late.
Were there any other songs you wanted to revisit but didn’t?
Yeah, there’s a couple of songs on Six.
Being a Girl Part 2, but the guitar part didn’t translate to an acoustic lead guitar.
The other one was Legacy, I still play that live as a solo artist now. But when it came to do that in the studio, we had to change the key of it, it was simply too high for my voice to sing these days and it just didn’t work in a lower key, so we abandoned some of the songs off the Six album.”
Was there ever any question that this could be a full Manson reunion album?
No. No, I think Mansun, we were together for eight years and two years before we got signed, so that was a decade of my life. When we split up, we went our own separate ways, that was done and dusted, there was never ever any thought of us getting back together.
This is a completely separate project from that. This is me, as a solo artist, picking some of my favourite songs and reimagining them with a full acoustic band, this was always the idea of the project, never to get Mansun back together.
Have the rest of the band heard your new versions?
I’ve no idea how they would react to it really, literally no idea. I might contact Andy the drummer and see what he thinks of it, but I’ve no idea.
Although you’re playing Mansun songs on the tour, it’s not the same ones as on Mansun Retold. Why is that?
The tour is very different, it’s with a full electric band.
I just thought we had 14 consecutive top 40 hits, they’re my songs, so why not. But I’m doing them as a solo artist with my band, there’s some songs I’ve never played live before, Closed for business is the big one, that’s difficult to do live.
Fool and Electric Man are the two big ones I’ve never played since Mansun so it’ll be interesting to see how they come across.
I don’t think it lends itself to do them in order, so I’ve sweated over getting the running order right. Opens with a bang, and closes with a bang.
You’re in your 50s now, do you look after your voice more than in your 20s?
I do, yeah. I smoked a lot of cigarettes – in between Mansun and my solo career, I was a record producer for about a decade and I smoked too much, so I had to relearn those vocals.
My voice is a lot deeper now, so as I said, when we do Legacy live we have to change the key. Surprisingly, I can still hit the high notes, just about.
Does recovery take longer?
Not necessarily but I do a lot of exercises with my voice, I do look after my voice, I drink glycerin, VocalZone [throat pastilles], I really look after it now even between shows.
Did you do that in the 90s?
No, not at all. I’m amazed it held up… there were very few shows where my voice didn’t hold up. There was one or two, I remember one in the Far East we had to cancel because my voice had gone, I had a cortisone injection, got some steroids down me and it worked, but I don’t need to do that these days, it’s held up pretty well.
What’s on your rider now?
Ha. Healthy stuff, rice cakes and hummus. I don’t drink alcohol these but my band still have a big selection of wine, whisky and beer but I just stick to the fruit and the hummus - low fat hummus, obviously – and the rice cakes.
But we do have a high quality pork pie on there, we always stipulate a high-quality pork pie. That’s for our tour manager but I have to say, I have a slice of pork pie now and again.
I think Wolverhampton [gave us the best one]. The promoter got a pork pie from a farm somewhere in Shropshire, he was like ‘Is this good quality enough?’ and was taking the mickey a little bit, we had a giggle.”
Which younger artists do you rate?
I think the new bands that hit after Mansun, Arctic Monkeys was the first. These days, I really like Wolf Alice, Alt-J, a lot of the alternative stuff. I don’t know what I’ve liked in the last year or so, I like the Last Dinner Party, they’ve got some great tracks.
There’s a lot fewer great bands now than there was in the 90s when the charts were peppered with them.
Do you think it is easier or harder for new bands now – on the one hand, they’ve got streaming services, but there’s limited mainstream music press or primetime TV shows such as Top of the Pops?
It’s a lot harder now, I know doing my solo career now, I’m lucky to have a fanbase, that was left from Mansun and kids discovering it.
I sell a lot of physical records, I don’t get a lot of action on streaming but it’s easier to get up and running these days, but there’s less venues for people to play.
It’s easier to get on streaming but to cut through the noise [and break through] is so difficult. I think that’s why there are fewer and fewer bands now, it’s a lot more difficult than it was back in our day.
Gig prices are through the roof too…
Oh God yeah, it’s weird to look back at Mansun tickets and we were doing shows at Brixton Academy for like £6, £8 a ticket.
I always keep tickets pretty low for my shows, we try and keep them as low as possible but for the big acts, it is unbelievable, the prices.
What’s next for you after this Mansun Retold project?
I’ve already started recording my next solo album, that’ll be the third one of new solo material.
We finished Mansun Retold in about May and began mixing it through the summer and mastered it, then pretty much from the summer onwards I started recording new tracks, so I’ve been busy doing that. It’ll be a lot shorter gap between my albums.
What keeps you going?
I’m always looking for new and interesting stuff and always trying to write my best song.
I’ve always loved making music and apart from being a frontman, I’ve always loved working in a studio, it is my hobby and I’m lucky enough in life to have made a career out of my hobby.
Even if I wasn’t selling records, I’m lucky enough to do that and I’d still be doing it as a hobby.
Would you go back to producing?
No, I think I did 10 years of being a producer, I really enjoyed that, I had my own studio in London.
I really wanted to challenge myself and had a bit of success doing that and really enjoyed that but now I’m onto being a solo artist and being a solo artist takes up all my time, I don’t have the time to produce other artists.
Do you have any particular highlights from the Mansun days that you still think about now?
Playing Glastonbury was brilliant, our first show at Brixton Academy, doing our first Top of The Pops, our American tour… So many highlights.
In a band, you have good days and bad days but as time goes on you only remember the good days. We had some highs and some lows, but the lows fade in time and I’ve loads of good memories.
What was it like touring America? Some UK acts find it tough when they’ve gone from a big fan base at home to almost starting again in the US.
Weirdly enough, as a solo artist, it’s my second biggest market. We toured extensively there, sold some records.
America’s been really good for us, packed out some shows, toured with The Seahorses there, I have fond memories…
Every band wants to go out there and we got on a tour bus and travelled from one coast to the other, it was brilliant.
