This Is No Declaration, I Just Thought I’d Let You Know Goodbye

Belle and Sebastian are my favourite band ever.

There, I’ve said it.

I first found them back in 1997. It was at a time when I was actively looking for a band I could call my own. Up to that point I felt like every artist I loved had been fed to me by someone else, whether that was trawling through my dad’s record collection and finding Bowie and Floyd; or if it was John Hunt copying the Beatles’ 67-70 album for me (with the tape running out two thirds of the way through Across The Universe; I still expect it to cut off every time I hear it) or Tiny Dancer playing me His ‘n’ Hers in Richard LeRoy’s car; or Simon Baker and Crisp Debris forcing me to buy The Queen Is Dead. I was always coming to the party late.

Then one Sunday Night on Stuart Maconie’s Radio 1 show I heard The State I Am In and I knew. I just knew. Sometimes you do just know, don’t you?

Dog On Wheels came out a week after and I bought it immediately and listened to the four tracks contained on it 6 times in one day. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before. I grew up with Britpop; Indie music was chart pop music to me. I didn’t have to trawl around in obscure record shops and read fanzines like people had to a few years before. Blur and Pulp were in Smash Hits for God’s sake (not that I bought Smash Hits...). I wasn’t aware of Felt and I wasn’t aware of Postcard Records and I certainly had no knowledge of what C86 was.

Dog On Wheels sounded like unfinished demos. You could hear the strings squeaking and the voices occasionally going a bit out of tune and the odd note being dropped. It was like the band had recorded it on a tape recorder in their bedroom for their own use (which isn’t too far from the reality) and let me have a copy of it. It felt like they’d let me in on a special secret.




Over the next few months or so they released two other EPs, Lazy Line Painter Jane and 3, 6, 9, Seconds Of Light, the latter of which got Single of the Week in both Melody Maker and the NME and people started to pick up on them a bit more and they were no longer my secret. But I actually didn’t mind, I was spreading the gospel with the best of them and managed to convert most of my friends along the way.

Once I’d exhausted the EPs I found out about If You’re Feeling Sinister and their unavailable debut album Tigermilk; their first two long players. I remember buying Sinister and realising that before I had been dealing with 4 tracks per release and it taking ages for me to tire of them, so the concept of getting ten new tracks at once was immense; I wondered if I’d ever be able to process it all.

B&S always say that Sinister is their most complete collection of songs and I think I’d have to agree with that. The run of the first six songs up to Get Me Away From Here I’m Dying, Stuart Murdoch’s mission statement, is extraordinary and for me I can’t think where it’s been bettered.

Next I tracked down Tigermilk to a church in Greenwich and paid more than I’d ever paid for a record to have it. Everyone knows the story of how that album came to be and if you don’t then you can look it up, but really the album is a miracle. Sinister may be their best but coupled with Dog On Wheels I think Tigermilk is my favourite thing they’ve done and still defines what was great about them to me.




Over the years after this and with varying degrees of inconsistency on their albums my love for them was kept alive by seeing them perform more times than I can remember. The first time was at the Bowlie Festival that they organised down at Camber Sands in 1999 that has since transformed into All Tomorrow’s Parties. They headlined the Sunday night and I was nervous all weekend thinking that something would go wrong and it would be cancelled. I have a bootleg of the gig but it doesn’t approach how great it was.

Other highlights would be hiring a box to see them at Royal Albert Hall and all of us shouting for Stars Of Track And Field until Murdoch acknowledged us with "Sounds like we’ve got some athletes in tonight". I suspect we enjoyed it more than he did... It would be many more gigs before I’d finally get to hear them play it, but God, when it finally happened it was worth the wait.

Another one that comes to mind is when they played the Astoria. My friends and I had tickets for the Friday night but I was sitting in work on the Thursday knowing that they were playing then as well and was unable to resist going down to the Astoria on my own and paying through the nose for a ticket from a tout. I’ve always been someone who gets too excited and has to open their presents before Christmas.

I guess I should also mention the time I went to watch them in Barcelona with Tiny Dancer and Casanova Cox of these pages. We stuck around at the after-show in the bar upstairs from the gig and it was then that I met Stuart Murdoch. It didn’t go well. For starters I was sober, which at the time was something of a rare state to find me in and not when I’m at my best. I won’t go into exactly how the conversation went but Murdoch left hastily fearing he was going to be beaten up and have his hat stolen by three English boys who have stalked him across Europe. Thank God Isobel didn’t turn up.




Oh Isobel...

The day Isobel Campbell and Belle and Sebastian parted company was my Beatles splitting, Kennedy being shot and Altamont all rolled in to one. I loved Isobel and I think in many ways I’ve been chasing an Isobel figure ever since. After she and Stuart David left the band things were different. Murdoch himself has said that one of the big reasons why he didn’t want them to leave was that he didn’t like it when the original line-up of a band he loved changed and worried that the magic would go with them. They went on to make their most commercially successful record in Dear Catastrophe Waitress but he was right; it wasn’t the same.

But Murdoch was still there and so were some great songs. I’m A Cuckoo, If You Find Yourself Caught In Love and the Good Vibrations-esque Step Into My Office Baby are all as good as anything they’d done before and the first two in particular were high points lyrically. And in the end, for me, B&S always started with the lyrics. As soon as I heard:

My brother had confessed that he was gay
It took the heat off me for a while

The deal was done.

In the sleeve-notes for Dear Catastrophe Waitress Murdoch names his canon; "Larkin, Cohen, Lawrence and Moz." As a list, it will do. Of that ilk, Murdoch is lyricist of his age. He knew his people and he spoke to them about things they cared about in the way that they felt it themselves. He remembered; he understood. Hell, he’d spent so long ill in bed that despite being ten years older than his audience he still thought and acted in the same way as them. In the same way as us.

Think of me as a friend
Not just the boy who plays guitar

He said, and we did.

In many ways his lyrics changed my life. Aside from opening up the indie scene to me (for good and bad) it led directly to me buying a guitar, forming a band and writing songs and meeting many people who will probably stay in my heart forever.

He’s on the list now; I’ve added him; he’s in the Pantheon. "Larkin, Cohen, Lawrence, Moz and Murdoch." I’m left with the memories and a number of questions...




Who will be next writer to make it on to that list? I don’t know and it’s probably not for me to say; it’s for people who are younger than me and still haven’t found their writer to choose who follows. They are out there, scribbling away in their bedroom somewhere, biding their time. Don’t worry, they’ll come.

Will any band or songwriter ever mean so much to me again? It’s unlikely; I think you only have that kind of thing once and at a certain age.

What will Belle and Sebastian do next and how will I feel about it? Their last album was not great by any means and they’ve been silent for some time. I don’t know whether it’s a misstep which will be followed by a return to form or the end of a great run. I suspect the latter but either way I know it won’t be like it was and really it hasn’t been for some time.

They’re no longer "My Band". They’ve changed and so have I; it’s all over now but by God we had some times didn’t we? Yes we did.




The Tracks

Belle and Sebastian are releasing an album of tracks they recorded in sessions at the BBC. As a geeky fanboy this is stuff I have from taping them off the radio at the time and I put it all together and produced my own version long ago. If they choose the right things then it will be their Hatful Of Hollow as there is some great stuff that they’ve never released and some versions of songs that are better than what we have on their albums. My favourites are the ones I present here.

First there’s a version of I Could be Dreaming which Stuart sings at least twice as well as his vocals on the original. When he sings about killing his friend’s abusive boyfriend or taking on some local kids who are having a go at him you actually believe him capable of it.


Belle and Sebastian – I Could Be Dreaming (Radcliffe Session 1997)


Next there’s Magic Of A Kind Word which is Isobel’s best vocal performance and also the best thing they never released.


Belle and Sebastian – Magic Of A Kind Word (Peel Session 2001)


And finally is The Loneliness Of The Middle Distance Runner. For some reason, although the recorded version hardly differs at all from this one, this is twice as good. I can’t put my finger on it but it seems to have more life and the right level of melancholy in Stuart’s voice to change it from being average on record to one of the greatest things that they ever did.

Have you seen The Loneliness of the Middle Distance Runner
When he stops the race and looks around?
I’ve left the stage
You’ve seen it now


Belle and Sebastian – The Loneliness Of The Middle Distance Runner (Live on The Apocalypse Tube 1999)


Ricky Stardust


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