Gavin Clark interview

In 2007, Gavin Clark's career looked to be over. After his bands Sunhouse and Claymore failed to break through and he was left without a record label, Clark was facing the very real possibility of making a living delivering pizza. That was until his longtime friend Shane Meadows, the BAFTA-winning director of This Is England, helped him to regain his confidence and return to recording and performing live. This is the subject of Meadow's documentary The Living Room – making its Dublin premiere on July 18 – which follows the pair as they begin the process while reminiscing over a friendship that stretches over 20 years.

“Shane put the whole thing together,” says Clark of the film. “We saw a Volvo on the side of the road for a hundred quid. We decided to buy it and drive around and talk and visit places where we met. It sounds like a really boring documentary but it's not. It's a buddy movie, it's just sort of talking. I guess that for anyone who's a fan of the music I do and who is a fan of Shane as well, it's of interest.”

The Living Room is just the latest collaboration between the musician and filmmaker. When the two were just unknowns working at Alton Towers, Clark was one of the chief contributors to Meadow's productions. Fans of This Is England will remember Clark's cover of The Smiths' 'Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want' during the film's final scene. The process continues to this day, with Clark's work featured in nearly every Meadow's full length.

“He would ask me for music. It started with Small Time, because he didn't have any money and he couldn't clear anything. So he set me up with these guys from Burton on Trent and asked me to write a soundtrack and send it to him. … He's brilliant at knowing what he needs. He'd say,'this needs a ¾ type of beat' or 'this needs to fit the pace of the scene'. So he pretty much grabbed stuff he thought would fit certain scenes from the film and then I'd edit some bits and do some instrumental stuff. With Shane it's pretty natural. I completely trust him on that. I've pretty much everything worked on everything apart from Once Upon A Time In The Midlands, which I think he hates. For that he was given a soundtrack he didn't want to use.”

In conjunction with the documentary's release, Clark has put out Beautiful Skeletons, a 22-track collection of unreleased tracks and demos over the past twenty years that Meadows had collected and helped to curate.

“There was even some stuff I didn't remember writing, he had close to 240 songs,” Clark says of the selection process. “I would hear them and say 'I don't remember that', but I knew that was my voice and I knew that was me playing. He took it upon himself to just keep recording me over the years and fundamentally that's what the record is. It starts with Sunhouse then moves into a different era, some stuff with the Leisure Society. I had an argument with him over the fact that this shouldn't be a best of but more of a truth of, it's just raw. You know those old blues recordings where you hear the wife in the background doing the washing up. It's got that type of element to it, that's what I wanted to go for.”

Copies of the record, which comes as a double LP, will also come with a DVD copy of the film.

Despite the reflective nature of his current workload, Clark by no means is ready to stop creating. He has spent a majority of the past five years touring with the British musical outfit Unkle and has a new album in the works, a collaboration with Leisure Society member Nick Hemming, another friend from the Alton Towers days. As for the Dublin premiere of The Living Room, which will feature a live performance from Clark, he expects the audience to see a completely different man from the one who appears the documentary.

“You'll see the documentary and you'll see how nervous and messed up I was. I was really afraid that I would become a pizza manager. Then you'll get the gig, which will be fantastic. Honestly it'll be a special night.”