More about: Baxter Dury

Baxter Dury makes an awful lot of interpretive noises. “Vroom” he says, as he demonstrates how quickly the time will pass on his seven month tour this year; ‘Fwuook’ he chimes, referring to the rate at which he lost two stone when he contracted sepsis over Christmas; ‘nik nik nik nik’ he sounds, indicating how much he talks. 

For someone with such a remarkable grasp on the English language, perhaps you’d expect something else from his conversation. But this abstraction is part and parcel of the Dury cannon. The idiosyncratic musician has such a way with words, that he sometimes doesn’t even need them at all. 

I’m sitting with him in the flat he’s lived in on and off since he was a kid. A close view of Hammersmith bridge, wooden floors bathed in sunlight throughout, a balcony put to good use during the annual Boat Race. It’s a beautiful place, and filled with art, “most of it” by his parents Ian and Betty. It was a bohemian upbringing. The flat always filled with people drawing and talking and making music. Can you imagine it at Christmas?

Now there’s just him and I. It’s freezing outside but sunny. People shuffle back and forth across the bridge to Barnes. I meet Dury at the door and wait in the lounge as he finishes eating a cheese and onion toastie, hot from the local shop in its wrappings. He’s relaxed and engaging. Dressed in cashmere and slacks.

“Wooosh” he’s saying, imitating the turbulence he experienced on the tiny plane he flew in during one of the many storms we’ve had so far in 2020. But of course it’s not all noises. As his latest album The Night Chancers neatly proves once and for all, Baxter Dury is brimming with writerly brilliance. In particular, the vivid portraits of people that he paints, which have become the bread and butter of his work. But where do they come from?

“I always conjured up an abstract world”, he admits, “a fantasy almost. When I was really young - about 11 - I lied to everyone that I had a girlfriend called Doccos as though she wore massive Dr Martens. So I’ve done it all my life”.

Now, at 48, those fantasy figures include underworld slime balls (‘Slumlord’), attention-seekers (‘Saliva Hog’) and the self-absorbed (‘Sleep People’). “They come from somewhere random, slowly”, he says, “I let the characters gallop on their own.”

Abstract and visceral, like the imitation of a sensation with a sound, Dury’s portraits are his greatest strength: the perfect accompaniment to a surround sound of electro-funk and francophile pop. “It’s quite a random sense of humour that comes… I’m interested in a vain world” he explains.

It’d serve him well to write a novel, I tell him. And he is. Or a book, anyway. Non-fiction. It’s about the Sulphate Strangler, a friend of his father’s that he lived with in his youth. It’ll be a fascinating peek into an unusual upbringing, no doubt. And inevitably written with delightful flair. But getting it finished isn’t Dury’s favourite thing.

“I can’t say I love writing because I find it hard. I’m unformatted. I never did an exam. My only discipline is from making music but it’s so tricky. All the advice that people give me means shit to me because I’m too feral. I’m bored otherwise.”

"My sense of wanting to complete it is the only thing that’s going to get me through this," he finishes.

Despite an attempt to get to the bottom of how he does write when it's happening, we don’t arrive at an answer. Discussing the Night Chancers of his latest album doesn’t help either. With Dury, most things seem to be abstract, and perhaps it’s better kept that way. The jaunty spontaneity of his speech, as in his songs, is a special trait. It’s why The Night Chancers and its predecessors (Prince of Tears and debut Len Parrot’s Memorial Lift in particular) are so delectable. 

In this latest full-length, you can expect a kaleidoscope of villains and recognisable traits. But like much else that Dury does, they come from somewhere absolutely random. A night chancer for example, is “the broadest term in the world. A pointless, no-agenda motherfucker keeping me awake.” To be specific, “a pointless, no-agenda motherfucker keeping me awake in a hotel room next door…they were raving.”

Nocturnal creatures do appear throughout the LP, but they’re accompanied by a cast of other rotters. “I’m interested in people in awkward situations”, he says, “I like life and things and adventures and people and stuff.”

There’s a breakup album element to all of this too. “This album is more like a behavioural account post-breakup and then going back into a world and trying to work out where you are, where you stand, what you’re good at” he clarifies, though little feels actually clarified. And it’s good that way. It works. 

Remember that Baxter Dury is the son of Ian. Untamed, excitable. Even the account of his close-call with sepsis is thrilling in his mouth: "I've never been so ill. I'm allergic to penicillin but they just blasted me with it" he says casually, rejecting calls from the hospital as he speaks. And what about the nightmare trip back through Europe after the filming of 'I'm Not Your Dog'? Nothing but a great story too. "We drove to Barcelona and the storm followed us all the way there" he twinkles, "and all I did was talk bollocks."

In the forty minutes I spend with him in his flat, Baxter Dury does nothing of the sort. He is measured and engaging, sketching out the portrait of his new album even further into the abstract world of his own making. When it drops, get The Night Chancers in your ears - it's time to join Baxter Dury there.

The Night Chancers is released this Friday, 20 March. Read our review here.

More about: Baxter Dury