Two interviews with Lloyd Cole: Part 2

You talkin' to me? Well, I'm the only one here. Who (edit) do you think you're talkin' to?

THIS is my interview with Lloyd Cole during my time as the music corresponent of the Liverpool Daily Post, actually, I think it was still the plain old Daily Post. I had offered to caddie for Lloyd around West Lancs Golf Club where my brother was a member at the time and Crosby, the town mentioned in the piece, is where I live and Lloyd's oul fella was brought up.

IT'S A reflective Lloyd Cole who talks to the Daily Post. Maybe it's the bad flu he suffered with while moving house back home in Massachusetts before he flew into Britain. Maybe the fact he's had to leave his beloved golf clubs at home for this two-week tour of Britain grates too.
(He's had to reluctantly decline an offer from the Daily Post to play West Lancashire golf club in Blundellsands due to the aftereffects of the illness. His Crosby-raised father, a former pupil of Merchant Taylors' school in the town, regularly played the famous links course in his formative years on the way to becoming a club professional.)
Either way, it isn't the same cocksure, archly ironic hipster who fronted Scots pop outfit The Commotions to no little chart success in the 1980s and then embarked on an acclaimed solo career more than a decade ago.

Two interviews with Lloyd Cole: Part 1

Lloyd appears sceptical at the choice of Leon Osman on Everton's right 
Picture: Boston Globe

I did two interviews with Lloyd Cole while working for the Liverpool Echo and Liverpool Daily Post.
In hindsight, they aren't very good, Lloyd's answers were great, they're just not terribly well written. They are what they are. I'm not looking writing plaudits, 'Good job too,' says y'all.
Here's the first:

FROM his Stuttgart hotel room, one of the coolest songwriters of the last 30 years is talking about his admiration for Gerry Marsden.
Lordy, Lloyd Cole , the king of intelligent 1980s pop praising the bard of Mersey River crossings?
"I have more respect for Gerry and the Pacemakers, still playing the oldies rather than writing mediocre new songs, " he says earnestly.
Some might think that the erstwhile Commotions front man, known for his candour and wit, has gone soft prior to his first Liverpool show in donkeys' years.
But no, the Derbyshire-born, 'naturalised' Scot now living in Massachusetts still airs his opinions very freely, taking in everything from The Waterboys to The Clash, and US indie band The Strokes.
For many, Cole, now 42, signifies an all-too-brief moment in the 1980s when pop music was smart, when Manchester's The Smiths, Australia's The Go-Betweens and Glasgow's Aztec Camera along with Cole And The Commotions looked set to dominate the charts.