More than four decades after Pelican West, Haircut 100 have returned with Boxing The Compass, their first album featuring the classic line-up since that landmark debut. . Rather than sounding like an attempt to recreate the past, the album feels like the natural evolution of a band finally getting the opportunity to continue what they started over forty years ago, informed by the experiences and influences they’ve accumulated along the way.
What began as a reunion to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Pelican West quickly evolved into something more substantial. After a sold-out show at London’s O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire and subsequent writing sessions with Sean Read (Dexys), Haircut 100 discovered that the chemistry between Nick Heyward, Blair Cunningham, Graham Jones and Les Nemes was still very much intact. The result is an album that balances the melodic sophistication and rhythmic energy of their classic material with the perspective that comes from four decades of life and musical experience.
With Boxing The Compass set for release on June 19 and a North American tour alongside Squeeze and Adam Ant starting in late summer, Nick Heyward and Blair Cunningham spoke over Zoom about how the reunion grew into a new album and what it has been like continuing Haircut 100’s story more than four decades after Pelican West.
It was initially a band meeting that led to the reunion; what prompted that initial meeting in the first place?
Nick Heyward: Well, it was to get together to play the gig, really — the Shepherd’s Bush Empire gig. I’d met somebody backstage at a gig that summer called Joff Hall. He worked at Kilimanjaro Live, and we were just chatting backstage. He thought that we should play Shepherd’s Bush Empire.
I was saying to him, “Oh, the dream gig would be The Roundhouse,” because that’s where we recorded Pelican West.
So I thought, “Oh, to go back there and play The Roundhouse, the birthplace of Pelican West, would be amazing.” But he said, “No, no, Shepherd’s Bush Empire.” And I was like, “Oh, well.”
Anyway, he booked it. He went ahead and booked it. I didn’t say, “Book it,” or anything. He just knew there was a 40th anniversary coming up. And I said, “Oh, well, I haven’t spoken to…” I mean, Blair and I were in contact at that time, weren’t we?
Blair Cunningham: That’s right. Yeah.
Nick Heyward: But I just didn’t know. Then, through the process of the 40th anniversary and all getting together with Daryl Easlea and talking about things, it was like, “Okay, let’s get a meeting together so we can all just get together and have a band meeting,” because it starts with those things, doesn’t it? It starts with a, “Who’s up for this? Who’s up for playing?”
And it was Blair, Les, Graham, and myself who were up for the gig. So we did the gig, and it sold out. Then the BBC Piano Room invited us on, and we found ourselves playing with this string section at the BBC.
The day we turned up, the call sheet said Depeche Mode and Haircut 100. And that could have been 45 years earlier, back at Razzmatazz or some other TV show. It could have been Top of the Pops.
Blair Cunningham: Because…
Nick Heyward: When we started…
Blair Cunningham: Top of the Pops. Yeah. That was pretty regular. That was our second home. It was loads of Top of the Pops.
Nick Heyward: With Depeche Mode.
So once you started playing together, given the time apart and the different things you’d all done, were there any particular things that felt different when you started playing together again?
Nick Heyward: The thing is, you bring all of your influences since that day. There was no plan to split up for 44 years — that wasn’t part of the plan. So for it to happen, and then to know that you can actually finish what you started, you’ve got the opportunity to do that.
Blair Cunningham: It’s almost like the universe reshuffling everything, you know what I mean? Because we don’t really leave each other. It’s just other things step in, doesn’t it?
Nick Heyward: I don’t feel like we’ve been apart for 44 years. I’ve always been a member of Haircut 100. Whether you’re in the supermarket and somebody comes up to you, that’s always the first thing they’ll say. “How are the guys?” At any particular point in the last 44 years, it’s been either, “Do you still see each other?” or “How are they?”
I’ve felt like that anyway. As soon as Blair and I get together, we start talking about the band.
Blair Cunningham: And the internet — Facebook and everything. Oh my God, that’s a game changer.
At what point did you start thinking about new music?
Nick Heyward: It’s immediate with Haircut 100, because we are a band. That’s the thing — the first thing we do is make music together.
But also, we didn’t want to get our hopes up this time because we’ve tried to get together so many times over the years. It’s easy to get together because we all get on, so that’s the easy part. The hard part has been staying together, keeping together, because to stay together you have to have a manager. You have to have that person in position because that was the reason… We didn’t have a manager in the early days, and that’s why it fell apart.
Blair Cunningham: There was no structure.
Nick Heyward: So this time we did the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, we did The Piano Room, and then the wonderful Melvyn Taub called and asked, “Do you want any help?”
At that particular point, he worked for Hall or Nothing, who are very experienced managers. They were managing Wet Leg, the Manic Street Preachers, The Script, all these great bands. So we just needed all the help we could get.
That’s why we ended up… then he introduced us to Sean Read, who had a studio in Hackney in his house. He plays with Dexys and Edwin Collins, and we’ve all known him. He’s a lovely guy and a total music man.
When he was recording, Blair was in the drum booth, Les, Graham and I were in the control room, and we’re playing. Sean said, “I see Haircut 100. I see how it works now.” We’d been around rehearsal studios that summer.
Blair Cunningham: Yeah.
Nick Heyward: Lovely hot weather, and we didn’t really want to be inside, but we’re inside and we’re making stuff up, making pop moments. And now here we are putting them together.
Melvyn just said, “Oh, just go in and do a couple of songs.” And we did 10, didn’t we?
Blair Cunningham: Yeah, exactly. You put us in a studio, it’s not, “Oh, could we do three songs?” We just keep going. It doesn’t matter how many songs — we just keep going. So that’s what we do.
And we’ve got like 10 songs. I’m like, “My God, we have songs for the next album.”
Nick Heyward: Then we went in to do another three and we did another 10. So we had 20 songs. Not all of them we’ll do, but that’s the process. It’s a process of doing.
You get these pop moments where Blair, Les, Graham and I look at each other and there’s a little kernel of an idea there. It’s making us melt.
Or if I’ve brought an idea to the rehearsal studio, like “Dynamite” — which I remember because it’s on my phone where I had it — it was originally on keyboard. I was like, “I’ve got it somewhere. I can play it now,” because that’s the lovely thing about phones. You’ve got these moments and they’re all recorded now, and you’ve got them to hand.
It’s like pop dynamite. It pops up and you go, “There’s that moment.”
And I was singing like John Cougar Mellencamp on a keyboard, going, “Yeah, you can sleep tonight… on your way to get out of sight. Oh, dynamite, you and me together for the rest of the night,” like that.
Then you take that into the studio, and it still wasn’t happening until Blair gets the groove, Les locks in, and then he gets a bassline. And if he gets a bassline, it’s Haircut, isn’t it? And it takes off.
Blair Cunningham: Yeah, exactly.
Nick Heyward: Then it’s just like… you can go anywhere. You can go anywhere with it. And then we started to think, “Oh, it’s sounding like…” and we’re grooving. It’s like, “This is like Kool & the Gang.”
Blair Cunningham: And that’s the beauty of Haircut, because once we start recording, it can sound like anybody. But it’s just finding that direction, which way you actually want to go.
I think, “Hmm, is that Haircut? Yep, that’s Haircut.” Then Graham comes out with this little riff and I’m like, “Yep, that is definitely Haircut now.”
Do you feel that you put any kind of conscious thought into what Haircut 100 should sound like in modern times? As a listener, it sounds kind of like the natural evolution. It doesn’t sound retro, it doesn’t sound like intentionally trying to be modern. It’s a really great balance.
Nick Heyward: Oh, it’s happening organically, isn’t it, Blair? Because it couldn’t be any other way.
I mean, what we tried to do consciously, if we were trying to be contemporary, would probably be so consciously thought out that it would need a producer, it would need to not be a band, and we’d probably end up losing our bandness.
Take Coldplay. I mean, they don’t sound like a band anymore. I would miss Coldplay. I want to hear Coldplay. I want to hear you guys playing in the studio. Like Radiohead, I miss that symbiotic thing that you get with bands. It’s just natural. You just think of who you are. You turn up to a room, you play, and that is it.
You’re not trying to think where you are in the marketplace, or how you should sound, or what it should be like. You are just being it, and it’s naturally happening. Then you’re evolving and being influenced by what’s around you at that time.
Blair Cunningham: Yeah. It’s quite robotic, isn’t it? There’s no warmth. I remember when bands would go into the studio recording as a band, but then Pro Tools came in and that warmth is gone.
Nick Heyward: That’s the magic you’ve taken away. The magic of a band is that you are a band, that the influences are standing in a room. It becomes all the influences individually of your life at that particular moment collaborating, and through that process it is happening.
And then if there’s somebody there to record that moment, and then editors cultivate that moment… But sometimes you need more editing. Like with my lyrics, sometimes they come all at once.
There’s that song, “Someone,” on the album. That was because I was having an Instagram conversation with somebody up in Scotland who said, “I was there when you met your wife at the bar in Maestros, at the faders between the desk and the…” And I said, “I thought I met her at the party afterwards.”
So I had this conversation in my mind at The Hive Studios when we were recording that, with Oliver, my son, on the desk for that one.
And I was going in to put in the lyrics, and I just thought I was going to sing. So I’m singing about, “Could it be… I met her… the faders… tonight… could it be… I met her… at the party…”
I tried so much to write proper lyrics for the rest of that song. It never happened. It stayed influenced by the Instagram conversation with a guy about my ex-wife.
Did I consciously want to write a song about my ex-wife on the Haircut 100 album? No. But it’s the way creativity goes. It just goes.
And did I think that we’d keep the guide vocal from that day and have to try to keep that guide vocal and turn those words into something else? No. But that’s what it was, because it never got better than that moment when we were at The Hive, when we put it down, when there was a vibe. Wasn’t there, Blair?
Blair Cunningham: That’s right. Yeah.
Nick Heyward: Yeah. Real vibe.
Blair Cunningham: These songs, you just know automatically, instantly. “Oh, okay.” The vibe, the groove, everything, it just happened. It just all comes together, and it’s like you just can’t go anywhere. You just play it right out to the end.
It’s an amazing feeling. It really is. Yeah.
Nick Heyward: And that’s what a band, any band, has. That’s your calling card. Don’t take that away, because that’s the whole essence of a band. That’s why people love bands, because they sound like they do.
You mentioned that you had like 20 songs. How did you pick what ended up on the final album? What factors went into that?
Nick Heyward: That’s hard work. It’s a process of doing. You do something, you want something to work, don’t you, Blair?
We had this song, “Riverside.” We really wanted it to work because it had the essence of future Haircut in it. There was almost this moment where this key change happened and it sounded a bit proggy. “Oh, that’s good.”
And it didn’t make the album because it just messed up the song at some particular point. You don’t want it to, but you’re not in charge sometimes. You just keep turning up, like when you’re writing a book. You may think you’ve written a really good bit here, but it ends up on the editing floor. Like, “Oh, well.”
Blair Cunningham: Loads and loads of tape. Yeah, exactly. So you’re slicing it all up to make a song, and that’s not how it works.
A lot of producers and arrangers do that. They cut this song and go right up to the middle eight. After that, it don’t feel right. The song’s all right up to the middle eight, then they start editing and chopping it up and trying to make the song longer or whatever. But it’s not like a band. It don’t have that whole feel, so they’re losing it.
So back in the ’80s, songs that didn’t make it onto an album would end up as B-sides. Do you see yourself maybe releasing some of this material that didn’t make it onto the album, whether online or through some other means?
Nick Heyward: Yeah. I mean, we’ll revisit it. “Riverside” will get finished off and probably be on the next one.
We’ve already got four or five songs. And then there’s the 10 that didn’t get used from the original batch. So we’re already ahead with the next album anyway.
Blair Cunningham: Yeah. It’s just revisiting tracks and updating them.
Do you feel you have a particular approach in terms of putting together a live set that brings together the old material and the new? What factors go into that?
Blair Cunningham: Honestly, it’s unbelievable. It’s really, really good. And it also helps with the sound. We had this fantastic front-of-house sound engineer.
Now, it took me a while to get used to the in-ears because I always had wedges. But Nick kept saying, “Blair, honestly, it’ll change your life. Get in-ears, get in-ears.”
Once I had them in, I don’t hear no feedback, I don’t hear nothing. And every show we go to, you just plug it in and it’s exactly the same. No whistles, no nothing. It’s just a dream come true.
I said, “Nick, you changed my life. No more wedges. Give me some in-ears. Quick, quick.”
Nick Heyward: Having that thing of more than Pelican West to play, don’t you just love it? To play “Raincloud” coming on for the encore, and then you play this new one and it goes like the clappers, doesn’t it?
And at that particular point, the audience really want to celebrate and they get—
Blair Cunningham: They’re up on their feet going crazy. It’s a good vibe.
Are there any particular songs from Pelican West that you feel differently about now, or that have a different energy than they did during your original time?
Blair Cunningham: I think because we were really young when we first recorded it, and then listening back to it now, now we’re dads—
Nick Heyward: Granddads.
Blair Cunningham: Yeah. It’s more… what do you call it? Adult. It don’t sound so teenybopper. It sounds real macho, macho. “Yeah, that’s what we need. More oomph, oomph, oomph.”
Nick Heyward: Yeah, I love “Love’s Got Me in Triangles” because when we first did “Love’s Got Me in Triangles,” it was like a romp around the summer countryside. It was very light, light and fluffy.
And now “Love’s Got Me in Triangles” is like “Saturday Nite” by Earth, Wind & Fire.
It’s so tight that when you’re all playing together, like flamingos turning in unison at one point, it’s so regimented and so alert, so wide-eyed and ready for life and the celebration of it, that song for me has taken on a completely different meaning.
I have a completely different view of “Love’s Got Me in Triangles” now.
And I remember popping around to Les’s flat. He had the curtains closed, and I opened them up and said, “Les, let’s write a song together.”
And he went, [unenthusiastically] “Ohhh.”
He was on the sofa, and we didn’t have a guitar lead, so it was like putting the guitar up against the stereo to amplify it and sort of playing this thing.
So to remember that moment and then know what it’s become now… it’s like you said, a really beefy thing. It’s so meaty and big and bouncy. It’s like The Who playing funk, isn’t it?
Because that’s what the set goes through. It goes through this funk, but it’s also like the influence of the time was so scratchy back in the early ’80s. Talking Heads were just coming through, and you’ve got Postcard Records, you’ve got Orange Juice and Joseph K and Aztec Camera.
Everybody was scratching at their instruments and making these jagged sounds. So funk was kind of nervous, nervous funk.
Blair Cunningham: Like a little weight underneath. Oh, you feel that weight. It’s like, “Oh, okay.”
Nick Heyward: Yeah.
Blair Cunningham: Now you start grooving.
Nick Heyward: Those years of experience, playing with McCartney, playing with the Pretenders, all of that is now in the set.
Blair Cunningham: Yeah. All those influences. Exactly.
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