What are you gonna do when you’re on the back slice of life wondering where the fuck your dreams have all gone? Are you still going be there waiting in line at fifty or sixty, the rain running down your neck wondering what you could have been if you’d had just a little more faith? Had a little more desire to change and be the very one thing you always wanted to be?

Peter Boyd-Maclean took that chance. He quit his stellar career as a London-based filmmaker and award-winning TV documentary director and formed a band called Book of Shame. Boyd seemed to have it all but he wanted something more, something real, something to call his own. He teamed-up with multi-instrumentalist Gary Bridgewood from Troubadour Rose. Over a two-year period the pair jammed, rehearsed and laid down tracks for their debut album (out this month) with a little help from singers Jo Foster and Claire Nicholson, percussionist Fergus Gerrand, pedal steel BJ Cole, and renowned record producer (Wire, Depeche Mode, Swans, Laibach, and St. Etienne) Rico Conning.

With a handful of singles already released, Book of Shame has earned comparisons to Captain Beefheart, the Velvet Underground, Joy Division, Radiohead, and even Alice Cooper. Boyd-Maclean’s life-so-far and the beginnings of Book of Shame read like a once-upon-a-time in a land not so very far from here tale full secrets, a bad step-parent, fortuitous meetings and a helluva lot of talent.

Boyd-Maclean started out making Super-8 movies as kid ‘cause he thought in pictures and couldn’t express himself in words. He had a difficult childhood, one that was much darker and far more disturbing than he might ever care to admit. As a student at St. Martin’s College, London, he teamed up with Rik Lander and pioneered scratch video under the name the Duvet Brothers producing promos for New Order and M|A|R|R|S track “Pump Up the Volume.”
 

The Duvet Brothers promo for ‘Blue Monday’ by New Order.
 
The Duvet Brother presented a three-hour installation of their scratch video work at the Edinburgh Festival in the late 1980s, where media exec. Janet Street-Porter stood up and said “Why aren’t these people working in TV?” Cause TV back then was clunky and dull and had hardly changed since the 1960s. The installation eventually kicked-off their careers in television but first they were invited to Hollywood to make video installations for the movie Less Than Zero and then back-projections for Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Through Street-Porter, Boyd-Maclean brought his handheld shaky scratch vision to “yoof TV” providing the style-template for the next decade.

Everyone wanted a piece of Boyd-Maclean’s televisual craft and somehow he ended up in the Music & Arts, or Musical Farts, Department at BBC Scotland in the early nineties. That’s when I first met him. It was obvious from the get-go young Boyd-MacLean was a prodigious talent whose natural flair far outstripped the lesser hopeful ambitions of his contemporaries.

But television is a rum beast which like Kronos devours its children or at least their talent for lesser rewards.

Yet, Boyd-Maclean made a highly successful career in TV-land, directing films and documentaries, producing animation series, and winning a shitload of awards. But something was missing. That ability to express his inner thoughts and emotions thru film were constrained by the demands of TV and the adverts who financed it all. With the rise of reality TV, television was little more than the wrapping paper to sell advertiser’s product.

One day, he chanced upon an old broken violin at the family home which he thought might be valuable. He took it to a menders to be fixed where he met Gary Bridgewood. The violin proved not to be that valuable but the meeting with Bridgewood undoubtedly was.

Having not spoken in a long, long time, I contacted Boyd-MacLean to talk about his new and so-far well-received career as a middle-aged indie rock god.
 

 
DM: Why start a band now?

Peter Boyd-MacLean: Why not
.

(He quotes a line from a song)

Now is the time

its never too late

‘Ill be dead soon

Better get it out
Now is the time

It does feel like I am doing things backwards but I started making films as a kid because I couldn’t really express myself in words. I thought in pictures and when I first picked up a Super-8 camera I found I could express emotion through film.

Now that I have lived I have something to reflect on, the ups and downs the pains and pleasure. Thanks to Gary’s patience and nurturing I have found I can tell short stories or capture certain feelings through words and music. It is an immediate output of ideas that doesn’t involve the planning of film.  
I have spent years developing scripts, that came to nothing because I don’t have the patience to pursue it for ten years or I don’t believe in them enough to commit for that long. Songwriting is excellent for a short attention span
.

The joy of writing songs is that its immediate and you can tell a story in three minutes. The discipline is perfect.

Elements came together mainly due to Gary believing there was something worth pursuing. I hope I haven’t let him down.

Rico making something from the first song “Killing Pickle” gave the inspiration to carry on doing it and him staying on board for the songs was the third element that made it happen. All the loss and grief I have experienced in the last few years required an immediate outlet.

The process of writing songs brings so much joy it’s hard to describe. Being present and in the moment while recording is like a meditation, you just get lost for a few hours.
 Sometimes the words just appear  like watching a photo develop.
  


DM: What do you mean by “loss and grief”?

PBM: Well, the whole two year period I wrote and recorded with Gary was a fantastic creative time. I also became a dad. But it was tinged with difficulty too.

DM: Like?

PBM: I was looking after my declining mother who was now suffering with Alzheimer’s. Driving 60 miles to sit with her twice a week.
 And also struggling to hang on to my house.

During this time my father, mother, step-mother, half-brother and an ex-girlfriend all died. My very good friend of forty years had a brain hemorrhage and was in a coma.

 I became very depressed at the losses but my solace and savior was writing and producing songs with Gary every Wednesday evening. If I didn’t have that I don’t know what I would have done.

DM: Become a country ‘n’ western singer?

PBM: Cruel.

DM: You’re writing songs to express something?

PBM: The music comes from the desire to express my feelings on stuff. I have always felt that I was making stuff for other people. I have now made something for myself. It’s the film I never made.


DM: How would you describe Book of Shame’s music?

PBM: Cathartic rock, Acerbic rock, Catheter Rock!
 I suppose it comes from a very personal place but I don’t think I am alone in these experiences and not everyone’s life is so fucking airbrushed great Facebook Fantasy. Life is tough and my songs are for people who have been through shit or are going through shit or just taking a shit.

It’s for survivors and strugglers. And for the people who think the world has caved in on them, hang on it will get better it will pass keep up the fight.
 

Book of Shame—‘Killing Pickle.’
 
DM: You sound like you’ve been through a lot of difficult times, what was life like growing-up?

PBM: When I was ten my mother remarried. I was taken out if boarding school where I was very happy and plunged into a nightmare of utter hell. The new husband had seven daughters from three marriages. So, with my two brothers that made ten kids. It was my Mother’s dream to have a big family—the kids were great fun
.

Turns out new Daddy was a psycho. 
The fear of beatings hung like a promise. He had a penchant for the horsewhip. When he hit my brother with a car torch across the face it was the final straw. I lay in my bed aged thirteen while my brothers beat the shit out of him in the bathroom, “Not the face, not the face,” I heard them say. Cunt deserved it
.

My brother went to India and I went back to my old boarding school and my other brother was at another boarding school. When I left school we had nowhere to live so me and john (older brother) got a Christian action house in Colchester.  We had a lot of fun, he was great. An inspiration and unique thinker.

I moved to London to live in a squat but got thrown out for a minor misdemeanor.

Back in Colchester with nothing to do I went to a meeting about setting up a film workshop. I set up the workshop on my own as everone else was working and and from the moment I picked up a camera I knew I wanted to make films. I found a form of expression that has lasted me for decades.

DM: Then you went to art school?

PBM: I got into St Martin’s School of Art on the films I made and hooked up with my old pal from the workshop Rik Lander. He worked as an engineer at Diverse Productions [a TV production company]. We started editing news footage to music and shooting music videos. My brother John told me about a band that needed a video called Torch Song. It was William Orbits band and Rico Conning was part of it.

Art school taught me about [Jean-Luc] Godard and deconstruction and jump-cuts. Everyone was shooting speeded-up video and fast-cutting. I found that if you slow video down it abstracted the image to blurry colors that looked good. I applied this to Torch Song video “Don’t Look Now.”

Rik and I applied these techniques along with the re-working of archive and became the Duvet Brothers—Pioneers of scratch video. The notable videos were New Order’s “Blue Monday,” “Pump Up the Volume,” Colourbox “Shotgun,” and the Sid Presley Experience.

DM: What happened to your brother?

PBM: My brother saw me through 
and just when we thought all was going to be fine and things were looking up, 
he dropped dead. 
Dead before
 he hit the floor
. No more. 
Kaput
. Out of the blue into the black. I pushed on and never looked back.

DM: That must have been difficult.
 

 
DM:Your work with Rik Lander as the Duvet Brothers lead onto working with Janet Street-Porter and youth TV?

PBM: We did a live multi-screen show at the Royal Albert Hall with Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Janet Street-Porter was with Tony James and kept coming to our edit suite and talking about a Sunday brunch show she was planning. We gave her loads of ideas including our shooting style. My mother was a psychiatrist and I told Janet she should have a psychiatrist do interviews with celebs. Rik was playing with ideas of putting facts as text over music videos.

DM: The rest is history…What have been your influences with Book of Shame?

PBM: I grew up playing Risk and listening to on A Saucerful of Secrets over and over. My older brother John turned me on to Zappa, Beefheart, then Wire and Gang of Four.

When I was singing in the studio people would spring in to mind like Pete Perret
 or Fergal Sharkey. Nick Cave
, Leonard Cohen. I think it’s called channeling.

DM: Tell me about the album Book of Shame?

PBM: 
The album was recorded over two years every Wednesday night. It’s designed to take the listener through an emotional experience—a journey to be corny. It gets dark and ends with hope.

I am hoping that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

I am not encouraging people to do this…much but if you had a shot at the beginning of every track, by the time you got to the end you would know what it’s all about. If you weren’t throwing up. Maybe you don’t need a drink and you’ll be throwing-up anyway.

It was recorded in Gun Factory Studios, London. Produced by Rico in LA. Mixed at Gun Factory and Urchin London. Mastered by Norman at Calyx Berlin.

DM: The album’s out this month, wanna give us a taster of a couple of the songs that will be on it?

PBM: A lot of fear and loathing. Ha.

There are eleven songs that take the listener through life’s experiences and the uncertainty of things.

DM: Like?

PBM: “Killing Pickle.”

“Killing Pickle” was the first track produced. Rico asked me to shoot this amazing drumbot he built with William. It was a drum kit rigged to a midi so a whole kit that played itself.
 I used the opportunity to play him one of the early jams which I had edited and written some words. He liked the riff.
 He re-recorded me playing the guitar then I did the bottleneck. He wanted more lyrics which I recorded on a phone in Norfolk and Greece. It came back as “Killing Pickle.” 
After that we managed to get his input on the next tracks as they rolled off .

 

 
DM: “Compatibility”?

PBM: “Compatibility” was written when I met Gary in the pub and we were planning in working on another song. In the car to Gary’s house he played the music for “Compatibility.” I said let’s do that when we get in. As soon as we plugged in I said just press record and I improvised the words straight off .

And there’s a track called “Let me Go” which came from a dream I had about visiting my brother in prison. I drove up to the gates in a limo then entered his cell which was like an old gym changing room. He was all crouched over and had his back to me. He turned to look and he was all ashen faced and wizened. His eyes were so sad—a longing to be free.

It was very disturbing but I realized I was keeping him locked inside me and I had to let him go to move on. I had an identity crisis after that and plunged into a decade of uncertainty.

DM: And the new single “Hope and Glory” which has received some great reviews.

PBM: I put some mad srtrummy guitar down and improvised some lyrics.

We took it and made it into what it is. We wanted to do something epic. I was listening to Radiohead and like the loud and soft stuff. I loved the pauses in Queens of the Stone Age.

DM: And finally, where did the name Book of Shame come from?

PBM: The name came initially from a discussion with a friend looking back on our lives on all the stupid things we did and said. We were writing the book of shame.


Then on a wider view looking back on all the stupid things that humanity has done and presently this government confirmed the name
.

‘Book of Shame’ will be out later this month details here. The single ‘Hope and Glory’ is out now.
 

Book of Shame—new single ‘Hope and Glory.’
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘1-2 FU’: A personal odyssey through British Punk Rock
‘Lummox’: In search of the Artist as Glam Roque star