The Thirty Year Itch

Micky Greaney's second album finally released - three decades on

In the mid 1990’s, Micky Greaney was ‘the man most likely to’ on the Birmingham music scene.

His debut album ‘Little Symphonies For The Kids’, recorded with legendary producer Bob Lamb (of UB40 and Duran Duran fame) had secured him a cluster of positive reviews and a residency at the city’s Ronnie Scott’s outpost.

Ocean Colour Scene, who shared the same Kings Heath studio, were also on the rise, and it felt like a coin toss for which act would break through first.

Major record labels came knocking, but it was when they did, says Micky, that things started to go wrong.

Parlophone offered what he describes as “one of those music biz contracts where all the dollar signs are flashing in front of your eyes…”.

Close reading of the fine print, revealed that - of course - “you weren’t getting that money upfront to spend on you.”

Much, if not all of the advance, would have been swallowed up in recording fees.

And if you were successful? “You would have had to wait years for your royalties” Micky groans.

There was another, more significant problem. The label wanted him to sign as a solo artist. Bandmates who had shared his journey would have to be junked.

“They were like, ‘oh, we’re going to get you some session guys…”

Greaney couldn’t face dismissing his crew, which included the Enigma Quartet, an all female string section recruited at Birmingham Conservatoire.

“That would have broken their hearts” he muses although now, he laughs “the girls have had a bigger career than me.”

There was at least funding available to record a second album, partly in Cornwall and partly at Abbey Road with John Leckie, whose platinum lacquered production CV includes Radiohead and the Stone Roses.

Greaney recalls that his muso mates “all thought ‘this is going to be amazing. We’re going to be superstars.’

“But when I turned down Parlophone, I thought it was pretty much ‘game’s up’”.

The record, ‘And Now It’s All This’, has been finally unleashed - just the three decades after his debut - courtesy of Warwickshire-based 17 Records. It is a thing of beauty.

In conversation, Greaney namechecks Jeff Buckley who is clearly an influence on this lush, melancholy collection. The orchestral layering of another band who famously recorded at Abbey Road can be heard too.

The release only came about by chance after Greaney made the mistake of sending a version of ‘Sweetheart’ that he’d recorded in Prague to Leckie.

The producer was apparently “miffed” that Villa-mad Greaney - never averse to a football analogy - had decided to “tread on the hallowed turf” of their mid 90’s project without involving him.

“He said ‘why are you doing ‘Sweetheart?’ We’ve already done it. It’s good’”.

Yet Leckie turned out to be an unlikely hero. He rediscovered his own takes of the sessions on cassette, after it emerged the ‘proper’ album recordings had been mysteriously ‘lost’ in the archives of music mogul Safta Jaffery.

John Rivers at Woodbine Studios in Leamington Spa has done a fine job in remastering what Leckie sent him. This collection sounds clean and clear and has aged remarkably well.

Now that it’s out, wouldn’t it be great to hear some new new stuff from Micky rather than his - admittedly excellent - old new stuff?

Greaney is vague about the prospects of a fresh record.

Although he’s still writing and recording, he admits, “I like the idea of doing Q&A’s and singing a few songs rather than putting a 12 piece band together.”

For a man who had a brush with the big time, he’s remarkably philosophical, saying that his only ambitions now are “to go to Ireland and play a gig for my aunties; and to swim in the Atlantic”.

Micky Greaney’s ‘And Now It’s All This’ is available now at 17 Records.