And the Hello there this is Brian accompanied by Simon welcoming you to Soda Jaker on songwriting episode 252.

Joining us for this one is a revered English singer and songwriter who first came to

prominence in the early 80s as frontman of Lloyd Cole and the Commotions before embarking on a celebrated

solo career which continues over three decades on. As this episode Graces your

pod Feeds he's just released his 12th studio album as a solo artist, The Wonderful On Payne, and he joined us to chat about it from

his home studio in Massachusetts, where he's resided since the late 90s. We are very happy to welcome,

you've already guessed it, the excellent Lloyd Cole to the show.

Lloyd was born in 1961 in Buxton, Derbyshire and grew up in the town of Chapel on

the Frith. The first song he remembers hearing was The Beatles or My Loving, not a bad introduction to pop music.

And some years later, as a youngster during the early 70s glam era became an amateur performers like Alice Cooper, David Bowie and Mark Bolan, receiving Terex's

Electric Warrior LP for his 11th birthday. In his early teens he got heavily into

punk and sang and played bass in the punk covers band. Our guests moved to London at the close of the 70s to study law at university college

but quickly decided it wasn't for him and relocated to Glasgow where he studied English and

philosophy at Glasgow University. By this time Lloyd had taken up the guitar

and his musical tastes had broadened to encompass disco, soul, funk and post-punk

and he was writing songs prolifically. Lloyd met keyboardist Blair Cowan in late

1982 through an ad he put up in the Queen Margaret Student Union. Together they

formed the synth-pop band Fun which then evolved into the casuals with

Neil Clark on guitar and ultimately morphed into Lloyd Cole and the commotions with bassist

Lawrence Donaghan and drummer Stephen Irvine eventually completing the lineup.

Having dropped out of college in 1983 and moved back down to London, Lloyd and the band signed with

Polydore early the following year. Their classic debut LP Rattlesnakes released in the

...