Martin McAloon, founding member of sophisticated dream pop pioneers Prefab Sprout and brother of front man Paddy, celebrates the 40th anniversary of the release of the Steve McQueen album with a tour. With his trademark honesty, humour and humility, Martin talks to Peter Freeth about the journey, the personal side of the tour and of life in general.
You’re coming up to your third solo tour, it all started with a one-off show in Hexham, what first inspired you to do that?
It was my friend Ben’s venue, the Vault in Hexham. Ben has an art gallery upstairs and he’d show my work in the art gallery. He’s got a stash of guitars down there and he saw me playing the guitar and singing. I think I did Appetite and he just said, “I’ll give you a gig.”
From the pandemic up until that point, I’d thought about it. I thought, I know these songs, but I’m not a singer. But I also remember Paddy not being a singer. When we started out, me, Paddy and the original drummer, Mick Salmon, we spent a lot of years not playing gigs, probably because we were very young, only been between 12 and 16 when we started doing this.
We thought we’d need a proper singer. The reason why we bought a PA system in the first place was to show that we were professional and that a singer would want to join us, like a male lead voice to do these songs justice. We spent a lot of time waiting for a singer to come into the garage to go, I am the vocalist you are looking for. The Paul Rodgers to your Free, that kind of thing. So we bought a WEM 100 Watt. I think you see the Beatles using it in the Abbey Road movie. We thought, this is what real bands do. They’re just like us. They’re cold and miserable and they’re playing songs and hating each other.
I didn’t know how I was going to get an audience. I was thinking of doing an invited master class because I’m so trepidatious about singing. I thought nobody would be actually interested in buying a ticket to hear me sing. But I just fancied doing that. I used to lecture so I know how to handle the crowd of people who who don’t respect you. I thought that would be one way of doing a gig, to talk about the industry and play some songs, which is what I used to do.
Does the name Prefab Sprout not have venues queuing up to host gigs?
That was something that happened a long time ago. You are old and grey and invisible and younger people get the gigs. Paddy has a lot of kudos and respect and he could do those things. He could put a band together quite easily. I’ve had people get in touch saying put a band together, do this, do that, we can get the biggest names on the planet, we can get Steely Dan’s backing band, I know these people. I’ve got no interest in that. I’d rather play for fun.
I enjoy going out. It gives me great pleasure to go out. I’m excited. I’m nervous as well but when I’m out there, I love it. I think Joni Mitchell said about Thomas Dolby’s production, that she felt she was being interior designed out of her songs. I think that if I was to put together a band of top session players learning the albums… I’ve done that. I don’t need that. I’d rather fail happily than go out and just do something that might satisfy a number of people and sell lots of tickets. But I actually like driving. And I like gigging. I like being out there. Who would have thought that at the age of 63, my main occupation would be folding T-shirts.
Is that a return to how it was for you in the early days?
Yes, yes. It’s definitely that. I just enjoy being useful.
As we age, we seem to search more for a sense of being valued as our knowledge and skills become obsolete, is that what you’re feeling?
Hanging around with Thomas Dolby, you pick up on things, I was probably early to certain things. I was just curious about a lot of things that he’d be talking about. So when I start to do things like that, you realise that you have a lot of knowledge, but that knowledge is becoming obsolete because of the internet. But at the same time, you’re gaining knowledge as well.
What you do have which people in business don’t see is that as you get older your voice becomes less relevant because you’re being further and further removed from things but your knowledge of human nature is vast and human nature runs any business. It’s dog eat dog. All of those things that you see Alan Sugar banging on about on television, you can see what he’s getting at and nobody would turn around to him and say your knowledge is obsolete but if you’re in the music industry you’re presumed to be obsolete because you’re 40 years out of date.
Since that first tour, your repertoire, your style and your confidence have noticeably grown, how do you feel about this?
When I started out, my first gig in Hexham, I thought I was in control. I was quite nervous before it started and I went up on stage and for the first five songs, my fingers had turned to sausage. It was appalling, I didn’t feel nervous in myself. I felt that my patter was okay, but my hands just wouldn’t work. It was shocking to me. So I do know that I am affected by the nerves, but it didn’t come out quite the way I was expecting.
For the second round of touring, I broke out in eczema. So, those kinds of things, you don’t expect them, but that’s how it takes its toll. For this last tour, I was much more confident. In the early days I was apologising for my singing all the time, then you realise you can’t go around just apologising. Just get on and do it.
I don’t know whether I’m singing great. But I know I make up for it with how I phrase the guitar parts to bolster the notes that I’m meant to be hitting with my voice. And that’s fun. I like playing guitar and taking the songs, combining the interesting bits of the songs. I don’t really listen to the albums, I have an idea of what the songs go like in my head. With an idea of the bits that stand out from the records, I try and incorporate those features into the playing.
I’ve listened to Steve McQueen in the last two weeks, just to pick up on any other features that pop out, that I’ve not really been handling, like the solos in When Love Breaks Down.
I do like changing them completely as well. Cue Fanfare is a slow waltz, whereas it’s actually like a disco waltz on the record. I do like messing around with them, but you never know whether the audience will go with you on these little journeys. But yes, my confidence is growing.
When you first start doing this, nobody tells you. You think all you have to do is go out and sing. But when you go out, you have to remember the lyrics, the order of the lyrics. And think on your feet if you get them wrong, if you make the wrong lyric, you end up rhyming the wrong lyric with another wrong lyric. And then you learn that mistake. So the next night you do the same stupid rhyme.
I’m thinking of getting an effects pedal but I’m scared to fall over it. It’s incremental little changes. Wow, I’m so radical aren’t I?!
With bands, there can be long instrumental breaks, different band members can lead at different times. Does playing solo put more pressure on you to perform and to fill the time?
I hadn’t even thought of it, that that’s how they split it up. Those kind of things happen. Yeah, you’re right.
Well, you see, when I first planned to go out and gig, I learned about 40 or 50 songs. I just presumed I’d go out there and play until they were done. It was Ben in Hexham who said, no, you’re not going on for three hours. You’re going on, you’ll do 45 minutes, you’ll have a break so we can sell beer. Then you’ll go on again and you’ll do another hour.
I thought, oh shit, I’m just here to sell beer. In the first gig I played in Newcastle, my son said he wanted to grab me by the neck and drag me off stage because I couldn’t stop. If somebody shouted out for a song, I just want to play it. I played over 30 songs and it went on for nearly three hours.
For Steve McQueen, I’ve got 11 songs on that album. I’m looking at my set list today and there’s only really space for between 22 and 24 songs. If I do 45 minutes for a set, next set, an hour or so, that’s 22 to 24 songs.
There are 58 songs that I’m not playing and only 12 that I can possibly do in that time and I don’t know which ones to do. I work out the set list seconds before I go on. If I feel like I’ve had a good night, I kind of know what I’m going to do, but there’s always some variables.
I think your wife shouted out for Basketball, didn’t she? And I played it. Some songs might be too much of a stretch for them to believe me.
Thinking back to that interaction, you asked for requests, then you implied that the request for Basketball was ridiculous, and then you played it anyway. Do you like to surprise people?
Yes! It’s showmanship.
I do like to surprise people because I think that was the whole thing about me playing guitar. Nobody knew I could. I know I’m not a great guitar player but I know I’m okay and I know I’m good at what I do. Paddy’s even better, he’s a fantastic guitar player and I think he’s totally underrated in that respect. I think nobody’s noticed because his songs are so good.
Paddy released acoustic versions of some songs on a previous re-release of the album. You’ve gone further than that, you’ve stripped the songs down to their essence in order to perform them in your own way, has that led you to understand any of them differently than when Prefab Sprout first performed them?
I’ve always liked my brother’s lyrics. But to be reminded of them and to see them in different lights and also to see the different reactions to people, it changes how you view them.
Some of the songs I’ve never listened to. I loved the song Sound Of Crying when we recorded it. It’s one of my favourite bass lines and I don’t play it. It’s Steve Lipson playing the bass on it. It was great to just be able to hear somebody else do something with one of our records. I play the song completely differently but I love that song and there’s never a point in your life where those lyrics don’t mean something
There’s something very full about the chords and the melody and the harmonies. You’ve got the lyrics sitting on top of a melody. You’ve got the melody being supported by something. Now, whether that’s chords or individual notes or whatever, it doesn’t really matter. It’s the structure that you put under the melody and the lyrics. And if you can’t hit the melody with your voice, you can still provide the support to make it.
You’ve got to go with each song individually. It’s the meaning of the song you’ve just got to get right and if that means taking out all the guitar parts and doing it with something else then I would.
A Scottish band named Start To End reproduce classic albums and earlier this year they toured with their version of Steve McQueen (our review), which was their attempt to recreate the album as it originally sounded. How do you feel about that?
Well, it’s always flattering when people cover your stuff. I love Kylie Minogue, Lisa Stanfield Rod Stewart, when they’ve covered our work, you really enjoy hearing those songs back, it’s a form of validation.
The first time I heard Cher doing The Gunman, I love her version of that. Lots of people on YouTube are doing covers of songs and they get it right. They take it somewhere.
There are many beloved bands where the members have gone their own ways over the years and perhaps they have become their own tribute bands. Is it possible to describe you as a Prefab Sprout tribute band?
I don’t do it properly! I’m kind of different. What am I? Am I a tribute act? You’ve stumped me.
I’ve become a performer of the songs. I think Paddy would have the right to travel under the name Prefab Sprout but I don’t think I do. My DNA and my fingerprints are all over the songs, but they’re his.
It’s the same with Wendy and Neil and Keith, our manager. They’ve all had a part in it so they have a right to be acknowledged or in some way encompassed in the the aura or the myth of it.
These songs mean the world to me and I’ve helped nurture them. I’m very proud of them but at the same time you don’t know where they’re going to go next. You don’t know how they’re going to either sum up an event or be a part of somebody’s life in the future. They’re still out there working, those songs, and I’m just doing my thing.
When you see the reaction of people in the audience and what they mean to them and how they’ve been in people’s lives, it’s overwhelming. But you don’t know what they’re going to do next, or where they’re going to go, or who’s going to hear them in the future and be moved in certain ways to do certain things.
You rarely get to hear that. So when you go out after 10 years, 20 years of not touring, and meet this audience that you’ve never really seen and have grown up with those songs, to hear it back, it’s quite overwhelming.
It’s great, but it’s overwhelming.
I like it. I’m addicted to it.
Two Wheels Good
The Two Wheels Good tour runs across the UK from October to December 2025 and all of the dates and links for tickets are on the website, martinmcaloon.com
Martin McAloon online: Website / Facebook / Instagram / X
Keep up with At The Barrier: Facebook / X (formerly Twitter) / Instagram / Spotify / YouTube