Beast Inside Tour Review – Glasgow

When a band come onstage to a recorded reading of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, they either take themselves far too seriously or someone, somewhere is having a great big laugh.

Despite the steely thousand-yard stare employed by 47-year-old former Inspiral Carpets singer Tom Hingley (picture him in your mind: an unlikely genetic blending of Ricky Gervais and Mark E Smith), the feeling is he’s in on the joke at some point along the line.

His mission here was theoretically to perform one of the Inspiral Carpets’ most well-remembered Madchester era albums, 1991’s The Beast Inside, in its entirety, although anyone who witnessed the flimsy turnout and the entreaties to hang about and have your copy of his memoir signed after might have suspected this was the last gasp of a once mildly famous pop star wringing the final shreds of his audience’s goodwill and filthy lucre out of them. Fortunately – and crucial to the success of the show – were the facts that Hingley genuinely seemed to be here for the joy of performing, and is also self-aware enough to neither expect the rock star treatment nor be daunted when he doesn’t get it.

After the singles Caravan and Don’t Be Cruel, he brushed off hollered requests for Saturn V to stick to the script, creating his own atmosphere by grabbing the tallest guy close to him and forcing the crowd to huddle close and jump along. As his capable band chugged along at a fair volume, the rubber band bass leading the line, he lurched through the battering Grip, the voguish late 1980s designer gloom of Niagara and a cataclysmic Further Away which saw his lyric sheets go flying and Hingley screaming at the crowd to “get down the front”. It was an exercise in consummate, entertaining showmanship, and his fans even got Saturn V by the end of the encore.
The Scotsman reviews Tom Hingley and The Lovers performing The Beast Inside at O2 ABC, Glasgow, on Friday 7 September

Yorkshire Post Feature

Tom was interviewed by Chris Bond of the Yorkshire Post for this feature and review of Carpet Burns.

In his new book former frontman Tom Hingley talks about his life with the Inspiral Carpets and the ‘Madchester’ era. He talks to Chris Bond.

BY the end of the 1980s, British rock and pop music had reached its nadir.

The innovation and experimentation that marked the beginning of the decade had given way to a dull cacophony of mediocrity.

But just as it seemed we were disappearing into the sonic mire, stirrings of a new sound started to reverberate across the country from its epicentre in Manchester.

The ensuing ‘Madchester’ scene that revolved around raves, Factory Records and the Hacienda, has become part of our cultural folklore.

But of the so-called ‘Holy Triumvirate’ that rescued British pop, the Inspiral Carpets have somehow been squeezed out of the picture.

Perhaps it was an image thing, for while The Stone Roses and The Happy Mondays had the swagger and velocity, the Inspiral Carpets seemed more like a collection of bad haircuts united by musical talent. But part of their charm was the fact they weren’t cool and when it comes to music their output far outweighed that of their rivals.

Over a four year period from 1990, the Inspiral Carpets produced four albums including their debut Life, which reached number two in the charts, as well as a string of great songs including Dragging Me Down, Two Worlds Collide and their shoegazing anthem – This Is How It Feels.

Despite this the band has been pushed into the margins of the story about the Manchester scene, which is one of the reasons why former frontman Tom Hingley decided to write about his time with the band and the people and players who made it happen. ‘I felt the Inspiral Carpets were being airbrushed out of the story by lazy journalism,’ he says.

‘If you watch 24-Hour Party People there’s almost no reference to us at all. Nobody else was coming forward to tell our story, the story of one of the best and most fascinating bands I think this country has produced. So I thought if someone’s going to do it, why not me?’

Carpet Burns, My life with Inspiral Carpets, is his account of being in a band caught in the eye of a cultural storm, but it’s also about his own story, charting his unlikely journey from rural Oxfordshire to becoming a pop star.

Hingley, who will be at the Morley Literature Festival next month, was the youngest of seven children. His father was a renowned Oxford University don who translated works by Chekhov and Solzhenitsyn, but it was music, rather than literature, that he turned to and after watching Ian Dury and the Blockheads play in 1977 he set out to become a musician.

He moved to Manchester in the 80s to study English at the former Polytechnic and got a job working at the Hacienda. By this time he had formed a band, Too Much Texas, and in February 1989, he joined the Inspiral Carpets. His book charts the band’s rise and offers an intriguing glimpse into the music business at the time and what happens when the hits start to dry up and the arguments kick in.

Since leaving the band last year he has concentrated on writing his book and touring as a solo artist with his band The Lovers.

‘It doesn’t pay as well but I really enjoy it,’ he says.

Click here to read the full article on the Yorkshire Post website.

The Beast Inside Tour – Newcastle

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.

The Beast Inside tour started in spectacular fashion in Newcastle. Here’s an extract of a review of the gig by Helen Todner posted on withguitars.com

The lights dimmed, and the rolling script from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar filled the room just as Cicero was explaining why it was a good thing he had helped butcher his emperor the light exploded into life and the band took to the stage. Tom was on top form, engaging with the crowd like the pro he is, and men who had probably never danced for at least 10 years  threw shapes on the dance floor last seen somewhere during the early part of the 1990’s (yes Steve that really does include you). And for just those few precious moments in time you were taken back to the heyday of British music, before Brit pop, before Oasis, back to when it was really ok to use keyboards, and the best sounds all had that distinctive Manchester flavour that oozed coolness and hedonism.  And we lapped it up from old to young everyone was bopping along and a few even went up close and personal for a hug from Tom whilst he performed. This was without a doubt one of the most memorable gigs of the season for all the right reasons.9/10

Read the rest of the review here

A selection of photos from the first night of The Beast Inside Tour, 6 September 2012, Newcastle O2 Academy.

The Crack Magazine Review

If The Stone Roses and The Happy Monday were the Premier League title contenders of the Madchester scene of the late 80s, then The Inspiral Carpets, along with the likes of The Charlatans, were certainly vying for those Europa Cup places. But in Tom Hingley, their frontman, they have a bloke who is certainly near the top of the pile when it comes to compiling his memoirs. This is one of the best of its kind books I’ve read in a while and details the Inspiral’s early days, the excitement surrounding the Madchester explosion, the band’s raucous tours, the recording of their three albums, the break-up and subsequent solo careers. Their early days saw a certain Noel Gallagher acting as their roadie (“very shy yet immensely piss-taking”) and Hingley is very good on the trials and tribulations that must befall all bands trying to make their way in the world. He’s also good on explaining the inspirations behind their various album tracks and, of course, there are anecdotes galore, the best of which feature, invariably, Mark E. Smith…

Review of Carpet Burns published in the September 2012 issue of The Crack Magazine.

A Bath Encounter

Hello,

I was walking up Milsom Street in Bath last night, when I spotted your book ‘Carpet Burns’ in the window of Waterstones. I stood and looked at it, thinking to myself  how much I had loved you and Inspiral Carpets when I was a ‘baggy’ teenager watching you at the UEA in Norwich in 1990/1991.

I have also seen you play a solo set a couple of times in Bath recently.

So I wandered, reminiscing, up Milsom Street, turning the corner onto George Street, when you walked past me.

That is why I – so rudely – pointed at you and said “Hey!”.

I didn’t know you were playing at Moles last night or I would have come along.

I was so shocked to see you in person.  Please forgive me because pointing – as we all know – is rude.

I hope you had a good gig in Moles.

Victoria

P.S. I would never go to see Inspiral Carpets without you singing. Surely it would be like The Rolling Stones without Mick Jagger?

An email to Tom, sent Sat 1 September 2012

Hingley Not Bitter About Carpets Split

AS frontman of the Inspiral Carpets, Tom Hingley was one of the faces of the ‘Madchester’ music scene of the late 80s and early 90s.

After their initial split, he joined the band for a series of reunion shows in the noughties, but departed from the band acrimoniously last year, before they began to surf the wave of a ‘Madchester’ revival with a string of major festival appearances.

But while Hingley, who has just released a warts and all account of his time with the Inspirals, talks about bullying and shadowy Machiavellian conspiracies within the band, he told Mail reporter TIM FLETCHER he is definitely ‘not bitter’.

MOST musicians resent being lumped in with a particular music ‘scene’ but ex- Inspiral Carpets singer Tom Hingley is ambivalent about the cultural happening which brought his former band to fame.

Hingley says the post-acid house blossoming of Mancunian bands of which the Inspirals, along with the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, were at the forefront, was a creation borne of that old gripe, ‘lazy journalism’, but accepts he and his erstwhile bandmates owe a big debt to ‘Madchester’.

“People like (Mancunian scenester) John Robb said that we casually benefitted from that scene but in fact we contributed a lot to it,” he says.

“We wouldn’t have had a career without the Roses’ first album, but there were other factors like (late lamented Manc venue) The Hacienda and New Order choosing to stay in the north.

“It was the biggest movement since punk and was very anti-London. I prophesise that there could soon be a similar movement because we have a Tory Government again and the whole country is being run by the south east.”

Hingley, the son of an Oxford don, joined the Inspirals after moving from his native Abingdon, Oxfordshire, to Manchester to study at university, teaming up with the working class Oldham boys who completed the band’s line-up.

The Inspirals’ organ-driven garage rock sound would earn them 15 top 20 singles and more than a million sales worldwide, but the future of British music could have panned out very differently if their roadie, a certain Noel Gallagher, had been successful in his audition to be the band’s frontman.

Hingley claims Gallagher was kicked out of the band’s entourage after smashing up their tourbus, and says he was deliberately kept in the dark about the fact the future Oasis mainman had auditioned for the job.

“The rest of the band didn’t tell me,” he says. “Why? Maybe some of them were a bit manipulative and maybe they thought Noel was a good person to have around.

“Maybe they thought they could draft him in at some point to replace me. Bands are quite Machiavellian things — they’re not the Chelsea flower show — but in any event Noel learned to be a pop star working for us.”

The band’s 1990 debut album Life reached number two in the UK charts while its successor, The Beast Inside failed to achieve reach those heights. However it’s the latter album Hingley has chosen to play in its entirety on his current tour with his band, The Lovers.

“It’s often the case that the second album doesn’t do as well as the first but we’ve carried this cultural cringe around about this album for the last 21 years, it’s never been revisited and it’s greatly loved and missed,” he says.

“We were a great singles band but that was our only great, coherent album.”

So how did Hingley arrive at this point, from being the frontman of one of the leading indie bands in the country to ploughing his own furrow while his former bandmates capitalise on a resurgence of interest in Madchester following the reformation of the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays?

After the band split in 1995, Hingley worked for a while ‘selling incontinence pants for ladies’ while holding down a job with a catalogue company.

“I was 30, redundant and didn’t have any skills,” he says. “It was incredibly hard — I couldn’t go and work in McDonald’s because I’d just have been laughed at.”

After resuming his musical career with The Lovers, Hingley eventually rejoined the Inspirals for a series of well-received reunion shows during the last decade, but parted company in acrimonious circumstances in February last year.

Clint Boon, organist and songwriter, responded to Hingley’s comments on his departure by Tweeting ‘Inspiral Carpets have not split up — it appears that one member has chosen to leave’, but Hingley tells a different tale.

“Graham (Lambert, guitarist) sacked me,” he says. “He forced me out of the band through years of bullying and he also tried to bully Martyn (Walsh, bassist) out of the band.

“There are various versions of what happened, some which stick to the truth more than others, but I don’t talk to them at all.”

At this point, Hingley, unprompted, insists on reading out one of the 60 or so text messages and emails he claims to have received over the previous weekend from his fans, following the Inspirals’ performance, with his replacement and the band’s original frontman, Stephen Holt, on vocals, at this year’s V Festival.

The sender of the message apparently pleads with Hingley to return to the Inspirals, asserts that Holt ‘cannot sing a note’ and is ‘killing the reputation of the band’, but does Hingley share this view?

“It’s not for me to say,” he replies, enigmatically. “Does it matter what I think about it? What matters is the people who have followed the band for 30 years.

“The music doesn’t belong to me or Clint or anyone else in the band. It belongs to the people who went to the gigs, bought the T-shirts and got beaten up in the toilets for having stupid haircuts.”
While he may sound it, Hingley insists that he is not resentful about the way things have turned out and his icy relations with his erstwhile bandmates.

“I don’t feel bitter, because when something is over, it’s over and you have to recognise it,” he says. “The passing of something is one of the great things to recognise in life, whether it’s a parent, a season or a career.

“There’s a saying that all political carers end in failure and I think you can say that about bands too, but I don’t regret it at all and I’m extremely proud of what we did.

“If you’d said to me at the age of 23 I could set out and do all this again, I would.”
A feature in the Burton Mail, 31 August 2012

Inspiral Carpets pulled the rug from under me

When Manc Indie band The Inspiral Carpets announced they were re-forming with their original singer Stephen Holt last year, they insisted it was on good terms with their frontman of some 20 years Tom Hingley.

But Tom’s newly-published autobiography reveals a rather different story – that he was left in tears after being sacked by his bandmates in a hotel in Ashton-under-Lyne.

Tom’s tome, Carpet Burns, tells all the highs and lows of his time with the band after he was recruited in 1989, the band’s 1995 split, reunion in 2003 and his work as both a solo artist and with The Lovers.

But it’s his revelations about being axed from the band last year – on the eve of a new tour – that will raise most eyebrows.

He writes of how he was summonsed to a band meeting at the hotel and told he was being “dismissed” as a member of the band, and that the others would be doing a tour with Stephen singing – a rumour he had heard in the summer.

Tom writes: “With tears streaming down my face, I said that I already knew that.  I stuck the letter in my pocket and said that I wouldn’t be an a*** about it.  I left the room and took my walk of shame back to the car, and drove away.”

The next day the band announced their reunion and tour with Stephen.

Tom says now that he was powerless to do anything about it – but feels they aren’t the real Inspiral Carpets without him.

He says: “Inspiral Carpets were a gang with Craig (Gill), Martyn (Walsh), Graham (Lambert), Clint (Boon) and me  – that gang no longer exists. This is a new band – it’s not that band that appeared on Top Of The Pops or played Reading Festival.

“It’s entirely up to them what they want to do; I legally couldn’t stop them doing it and I had other things I wanted to do. There are two sides to every story and they told people through Twitter and Facebook that Steve (Holt) was singing for them again, but the vast majority of people who bought tickets for their tour in March or the shows they did with the Happy Mondays had no idea I wasn’t singing in the band.

“I’m not trying to make some issue out of that; they’re totally free to do whatever they wanted. But they didn’t tell the fans I wasn’t in the band. It doesn’t upset me, I just don’t think it’s very clever.”

A feature on Tom in Manchester Evening News diary pages.

Oxford Mail Feature

Feature on Tom in the Oxford Mail, 25 August 2012

Book Launch Video

>
Mike Joyce (The Smiths) interviews Tom at the Carpet Burns book launch. The footage also includes clips from Tom’s acoustic performance on the night. All footage was shot by Eartwister TV, part of Eartwister music blog.

Big Issue Feature

A Q&A with Tom in The Big Issue