Barrie Cadogan
He’s played with Primal Scream and his own band Little Barrie – but how will he handle the 10 questions we ask everyone?
1What was your first guitar and when did you get it? “My first ever guitar was just a cheap Spanish guitar, which I got for Christmas in 1989. I even remember the brand name: it was called Prince and it was 40 quid. My sister’s still got it, I gave it to her. I think it still has some of the same strings on from 1989 as well!”
2Suppose the building’s burning down; what one guitar from your collection would you save? “My Cherry Red Gibson 330, 1962. That’s the guitar I’ve had for the longest… I mean, I’ve got other guitars that mean a lot to me, but I’ve done a lot of stuff with it. That guitar marks a change in the way I play, I think, and the way my style developed came through that guitar, really. I don’t gig it as much as I used to, but I still use it a lot.”
3What’s the oldest guitar you own? “At the minute it’s probably my Les Paul Custom, that’s the oldest one I’ve got, I think – it’s a ’55. I’ve had it for about four years. When I bought it, it was in a bit of a state, it needed work and I had to get it back to how it should have been. It had been messed with, basically; someone had put a humbucker in the bridge and I had to get that taken out, filled in and a P-90 put in. It had a nasty refret, so I had to do some work on it, but it’s a cool guitar.”
4When did you last practise and what did you play? “I’ve been playing this morning, actually. A friend of mine has lent me a guitar and it’s got flatwound strings on it; it’s got a wound third on it and so it’s not as bendy as light gauge strings, so I’ve been messing around on that, playing R&B and jump blues things on it, just for fun. It’s an old Kay guitar and it sounds really good.”
5When was the last time you changed your own strings? “I don’t do it very often; I don’t like new strings that much. Well, I don’t like them when they’re brown and awful, either! I think I changed them on my white guitar fairly recently – recent for me, anyway. But when strings are new they’re too shiny and sound a little too bright.”
6What are you doing five minutes before you go on stage and five minutes afterwards? “Just pacing the room, waiting to go on, you know? It’s that thing where you don’t know what to do with yourself. But then, coming off stage, the first thing is to ask each other what we thought of it, and sit down and collapse, look at each other to see what we made of it and open a beer or something.”
7What’s the worst thing that has happened to you on stage? “I think the funniest but most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened was that I fell over on stage when I was playing with Primal Scream. It was some kind of radio event in Scotland and I bought this pair of shoes that I thought were really cool from this vintage clothes shop in Newcastle while we were on tour, but they were really old and the soles were quite slippery – and I slipped over during a guitar solo. The rest of the band were absolutely pissing themselves. It was funny, though. I just had to carry on playing…”
8What’s the closest you’ve come to quitting music? “I hope that I never quit music ever, you know? I’ve felt like quitting the industry, but not quitting music. It’s very hard for people – especially for young people starting out – if they haven’t got a lot of money behind them. Even trying to survive as a full-time musician, if you haven’t got anyone bankrolling you, it’s really hard. But if no-one booked me for a gig, I’d still play at home or something.”
9Are there any aspects of playing guitar that would you like to be better at? “I’d like to be more original. Originality and have the ability to be able to really say something with it and make people feel it. To get across the feeling that you’re after – I think that’s the most important thing.”
10What advice would you give your younger self about the guitar if you had the chance? “Obviously you need to have quality control in what you’re doing, but you need to not give yourself so much of a hard time, to the point where you can’t even try anything, you know? You know how you can sometimes talk yourself out of something, wondering if it’s any good before you’ve given it a chance – like, to complete a rough recording or something? I think that sometimes you’ve got to go through writing things that aren’t any good to get to the things that are interesting.” [DM]
“Sometimes you’ve got to go through writing things that aren’t any good to get to the things that are interesting”