The Guardian
Friday 30 August 2019 5
under my Porsche. And I’m inside,
in the middle of a fucking week-long
bender. I just shook. I thought : ‘I’m
that kid. What have I done?’”
And so his second album became
about exorcising his demons. “At
that time in my life, I had nothing
else to give, apart from this voice in
my head,” he says. He managed to
get an accompanying documentary
bankrolled, in which he went
in search of his parents. Bowie
encouraged his musical endeavours.
“He told me: ‘ Stick to what you
believe in – if you’re going to do it,
do it all the way.’” He followed that
advice to the letter. The sessions
for Saturnz Return, and Mother in
particular, became increasingly
elaborate: a 30-piece string section,
classically trained child singers, the
best session musicians money could
buy. He says he knew from the start
that it was “a recipe for disaster ...
commercial suicide ”, but he is still
hugely, infectiously enthusiastic
about his hour-long opus.
“It starts with this beautiful
piece of music that’s the voice of a
child who’s not arrived yet. It’s like
looking at your mum’s vagina and
knowing : ‘I know this is going to be
a very diffi cult life, but it’s the one
life you need to make count.’ And
then the mother rips away from him
and the whole thing descends, and
it’s being cast away, and there’s a
sound like a whip, the whip of life,
the abuse, the next children’s home
and the next one and the next one,
all the same. He’s trying to fi nd his
way and he becomes a monster, and
the beats become really complex and
start to grow really fi erce, and then
it drops all of a sudden into a bell
sound, the realisation of life, and, at
48 minutes, we have the solo cello –
what would she have said when I did
fi nd her? ‘I’m sorry, son, for what I
did to you ’?” His voice fi nally trails
off. “So, all of that.”
His record company didn’t
share his enthusiasm. “They were
listening to it, swilling their wine
glasses, and it kind of was the end
for one [label executive]’s career,”
he nods. “They were expecting
something like my fi rst album, and
what they got was what happens
if you have a guy who’s got more
money than sense, more cars on the
driveway than girlfriends, an ego
and copious amounts of Peruvian
fl ake, and this voice in his head
saying : ‘ This is not you, mate, you
need to make this album, with this
classical impressionistic piece of
music on it called Mother, and you’ll
get crucifi ed for doing it.’”
Critics were so perplexed that
largely they chose to ignore the rest
of the album – no mean feat, given
that its guests included Bowie,
Noel Gallagher and KRS- One – to
concentrate on Mother, wondering
aloud what the hell he thought he
was doing. Goldie also began to think
the documentary about his parents
was a mistake. It certainly made
for deeply uncomfortable viewing.
“Going to America and sitting with
my dad: ‘ Why did you get with my
mum, eh?’ Seeing my mum: ‘Why
did you leave me at the fucking post
offi ce?’ Chastising them. I think I
would have responded better behind
closed doors. I don’t think I neededto air my laundry to a world that was
never going to understand it in its
entirety anyway.”
Goldie soldiered on, DJing,
releasing music and fronting two
documentary series, Classic Goldie
in 2009 and Goldie’s Band By Royal
Appointment in 2011. The former
saw him learn to write scores for
an orchestra and culminated in
a performance of his piece Sine
Tempore at the Proms. The latter
featured him coaching a group of
young musicians to perform at
Buckingham Palace. In the process,
he became something of a national
treasure ; he was awarded an MBE
in 2016. “I always felt it stood for
massive bell- end,” he laughs.
He says he didn’t care about
Mother’s initial reception, because
the song had already served its
purpose. He eventually reconciled
with his mum. When she was dying,
he visited her in hospital and she
asked if he would play the track at
her funeral. “I said : ‘Mum, it’s too
long. By the time it’s fi nished, even
the fucking caretakers will have
packed up and gone home.’”
But he went to see her body in
the chapel of rest. “They made me
a cup of tea and I went to her cubicle
and there she was, in the box. Like
a little white monkey : her skin
looked like marble, stretched over
her. I sat down, drank my tea, put
my headphones on and I played it.
I let the album go after that. That
was what it was for. I played it for
my mother when she died. Someone
wants to put it out, they’re welcome,
but it doesn’t bother me ; it’s done,
I don’t want to fi nancially gain from
it. It was for that simple moment.”
Of course, being Goldie, 10
minutes later he is telling me that
the track should be performed at the
Royal Albert Hall by an orchestra and
that : “ If I got hit by a bus tomorrow,
you’d get people going: ‘ Oh, we
should make Mother into an opera,
it’s what he would have wanted.’”
When he leaves – off to a meeting
about a forthcoming fi lm called Si ne
Tempore, based on his childhood –
a bus does indeed screech to a halt,
although not to avoid him. The
driver bellows his name and leans
out of the window, wanting to shake
his hand. Goldie smiles and gives me
a thumbs-up. “You see?” he laughs.
“Man of the people!”
Saturnz Return: 21st Anniversary
Edition is released todayThey thought
I was a rock
star, because
I did a lot of
drugs and I
was a bit crazy
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