41SIMPLY REDThere were raised eyebrows when it
was announced back in 2010 that for
a series of Faces reunion gigs it would
be Mick that would be taking on
lead vocals, rather than Rod Stewart.
“I spoke with Rod and he was very
comfortable about it,” the singer
explains. “I said, ‘Look, I’m just standing
in for you. I’m not trying to nick your job
or anything.’ He couldn’t do it, the boys
wanted to play and I was absolutely
thrilled and honoured to be asked.”
Some Faces fans weren’t best
pleased that a ‘pop’ singer was
fronting the band, but really that was
the least of Mick’s worries. “One of the
miracles of Rod’s early voice is that it
sounds low but it’s really high. With
everything before Atlantic Crossing he
had this incredible tone that you don’t
realise is high – it’s got this deep voice
but when you start singing those old
songs, Jesus Christ, they’re diffi cult!
I asked him about that and he goes,
‘Ah, that’s ’cos you’re a tenor and
you’re actually singing a soprano part.’
Jesus, tell me about it!
“It was incredible standing on stage
listening to that sound behind you, but I
wouldn’t have fancied doing a 30-date
tour with them. I think I would have
cried! I was really pushing my voice in
the high end. If I’d done it much longer
I would have started doing some
serious damage.”I’M THE
FACE
another four to become a transatlantic hit for
his next venture, Simply Red.
“It was the fi rst thing I wrote that felt real,
you know?” he remembers. “I didn’t know at
the time it was going to be important, it was
just very sincere. It was about me, being on
that cusp of leaving home and yet being
slightly fearful of going away – ’cos at 17
you’re still effectively a child in many ways.
“But it really set me off. It was there in the
background with all these other songs that
I was writing. I’ve known Neil [Smith, the
Elevators guitarist who got a co-credit on the
song] since I was three years old.
“We used to hang out every Friday night
before going down the pub. We’d get
together in my bedroom – he’d show me a
song that he’d written and I’d show him one
of mine. We’d work on them and then go
down the pub. Then we would spend the rest
of the evening talking about Beatles songs,
analysing every chord and endlessly talking
about music.”
Fame, initially, was problematic for him.
“I have to confess I don’t think I handled it
well. I’m better at it now, but I wasn’t then.
I’ve always been musically ambitious and
stardom and all that business is something
that is part of that, but I didn’t know really
how to deal with it. I’m a working class boyThat turmoil is deliberately kept at bay on
the record. “There’s nothing on it that’s linked
with politics in any way,” he insists. “I feel
politically homeless at the moment (a
prominent public supporter of New Labour
during the 1990s, Hucknall has been
severely critical of Jeremy Corbyn) so it’s a
welcome thing for me to just escape from it
and enjoy some music.”
Was he tempted to slip in something
Brexit-related, in the same manner of
Wonderland (the poignant critique of
Thatcherism that closed the Stars album)?
“Not at all. I’ve done all that before. This is a
bit of escapism – it’s a good-time blue-eyed
soul album.”
WORKING CLASS HERO
Mick’s earned the right to kick back. At a
time when music biopics have never been so
popular, his story has a Hollywood fl avour to
it. Abandoned by his mother, aged three,
brought up by his dad, the working class lad
falls in love with soul music as a teenager,
but goes to that infamous Sex Pistols
Manchester concert and forms his own
scratchy punk band, The Frantic Elevators.
Aged 17, he writes Holding Back The Years,
a personal cri de coeur which takes fi ve
years to be released by the Elevators, thenAn ever-changing roster of musicians
have featured in Simply Red over the
years. Mick Hucknall and saxophonist
Ian Kirkham (third from left), who
joined on second album Men And
Women, remain the only constants.