The Waterboys’ Mike Scott is many things. Prolific. Ambitious. Musical. Lyrical. But one thing Scott is not is ingratiating.
This has been the case throughout the The Waterboys Scottish musician’s long career.
How else would you explain the decision to follow the anthemic “big music” of The Waterboys’ commercial peak, 1985’s This Is the Sea, with an album of Irish and Scottish folk music, 1988’s Fisherman’s Blues? And how else would you explain the monomaniacally-detailed storytelling of The Waterboys’ latest album, last year’s quasi-audio biography, Life, Death and Dennis Hopper?
Scott, who’s been The Waterboys’ one constant since the band formed in London in 1983, has always followed his nose, and his nose has never fancied nuzzling the same object for very long.
The Waterboys will be back in Australia this May for a national arena tour, stopping in Melbourne for a show at the Palais on 16 May.
If the band’s recent tour setlists are anything to go by, fans can expect a hefty portion of the Dennis Hopper backstory.
THE WATERBOYS
- Tuesday 12 May – Perth, Astor Theatre
- Friday 15th May Sydney, State Theatre
- Saturday 16th May Melbourne, Palais Theatre
- Monday 18th May Brisbane, The Tivoli
- Tickets here
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“In Europe and the USA, we played a 45-minute set from the album in the middle of the show,” Scott says, chatting to Beat over Zoom from his Dublin home.
“So, we would come on and play familiar music for the audience and then we would do a Hopper set and then we would do more familiar music, and that shape worked very well.”
Scott has been fascinated with the career and personal history of Hopper, a star of the New Hollywood era, for several years. A song called Dennis Hopper appeared on The Waterboys’ 2020 album, Good Luck, Seeker.
He was able to fully indulge his fascination with Hopper, who died in 2010, on Life, Death and Dennis Hopper – a 25-song concept album that runs for more than an hour and features Bruce Springsteen, Steve Earle and Fiona Apple.
“Dennis Hopper, what a man, what a life,” Scott says. “Not easy to write the songs, but very easy to identify episodes or eras in his life that were worth writing about. So, it was a very fascinating project. And to be not writing about myself as well, not writing autobiographically, but writing about someone else’s life, it was quite liberating. I really enjoyed it.”
Scott has never particularly struggled for songwriting inspiration. Life, Death and Dennis Hopper is The Waterboys’ 16th studio album, and he has also released a couple of solo LPs. But despite this level of output, he has always taken a fairly relaxed approach to songwriting.
“It’s very rare for me to think, ‘Well, all right, I’m going to write some songs now,’ and sort of dig in for a couple of weeks to write songs,” Scott says.
“It’s more like I’m alert and I’m available, and when it’s ready to happen, I’m paying enough attention that I pick it up.”
The Waterboys haven’t abandoned the music with which they made his name. Several of the band’s most adored songs continue to appear in their live setlists, including their 1983 debut single, A Girl Called Johnny, and selections from Room to Roam (1990) and Dream Harder (1993). Fisherman’s Blues’ freewheeling title track is a live staple, and the bulk of This is the Sea gets a run most nights.
“I enjoy playing those songs,” Scott says. “They’re really good, really fun to play, which is why we still play them. The audience loves them too, so it’s dead easy to play them live.”
Scott can’t guarantee the songs will sound exactly as audiences remember them, however. He holds himself to a high standard, and sometimes that means tinkering with the past.
“If I’m not happy with a piece of the lyrics, sometimes I’ll go back to an old song of mine and I think, ‘What the hell did I put that in the lyric for? That’s not good enough.’ In fact, there’s a couple of lines in The Whole Of The Moon that I don’t like, that I never sing because I’ve changed them since.”
“I consider my songwriting as an ongoing process,” he adds. “I can change anything I like. And I’ll do that to other people as well. You know, if I sing a Bob Dylan song and I don’t like a couple of lines, I’ll fix them. They’re not museum pieces. They’re living things.”
The Waterboys will perform at the Palais Theatre on Saturday 16 May.
