Woolsey s Worth

Phil Woolsey s influence really does pop up in the oddest places.Take those tongue-in-cheek Reservoir Prods t-shirts Messers Blue, Blonde, Pink etc bedecked in shades and sashes that have made fleeting cameos in The Acid House and The Young Persons Guide To Being A Rock Star, that the mass ranks of Glasgow Rangers fans have co-opted and seemingly taken to heart.

Well guess who came up with the original design?
And when Sky Sports are searching for a tune to jazz up their footie coverage, they never seem to look much further than Rush Hour , the song that gave Phil s previous band Joyrider a top ten hit in 1996. Phil has probably supported more of Andy Cole s goals than Ryan Giggs.
Best of all, when Robbie Williams released the first few singles from his debut solo album, did you think they were a bit hazy, a tad woozy, ever so slightly binned?
What ever could have caused that?
The first time Joyrider did Top Of The Pops, explains Phil, Robbie hung out in our dressing room with us and we got him completely bollocksed on skunk. We d recorded Rush Hour in the same studio he did Freedom in, so we sort of knew him. And most of the guys in his band for the show were session musicians that I don t think he d ever met before, so he came in with us.
I always found him a great bloke, bit of a mad wee fucker, like, but sound. I remember we were watching MTV and Gary Barlow s video came on and he says to us, Here, you re from Northern Ireland. I know where that fucker lives, come on we ll all go round and put his windows in. We didn t, of course.
Joyrider split in 1998, never having stepped out of the shadow of their first big single, and Phil admits that much of the ensuing period saw him back home in Portadown doing nothing more than sitting around scratching my arse .
Now, though, he s all itched out and Phil s thoughts are very much concentrated on his new group Ninebar. After a series of line-up changes they ve now settled down with bassist Richard Dale, guitarist Tom McShane, drummer Darren Pilkington, and David O Reilly on keyboards. And it s time to start thinking big again.
Prince Naseem and Madonna and people like that seem to have these huge plans. They come up with the vision and it happens. They make sure it happens. And, although I wouldn t be a hippy, I sort of believe that. I remember with Rush Hour everything just happened the way I saw it happening.
The sleeve design was perfect, just the way I wanted it. The video was shot on a sunny day by the pool. Our tour bus was blown up in London by the bomb-squad and it made the news everywhere. The single came out in the middle of July just as the whole Garvaghy Road thing was kicking off and Radio One sent a reporter over to cover it. They interviewed passers-by on the road, and the first person they spoke to was Simon who was in the band. It was just one of those times when everything fell into place. I haven t felt like that since, but I ve got a good feeling about Ninebar. It s starting to click. It s my favourite stuff that I ve ever done.
The first fruits of this newfound stability can be heard in the band s great forthcoming EP. It s a tremendously re-assuring release. Queen s Lounge , the lead track, shows that, lyrically, Phil has lost none of his appetite (he s the guy that called his first album Be Special after all) for tickling the nerve-ends of Northern Irish machismo. While overall, his knack of conjuring up top-notch pop songs remains undimmed.
You could make the case that he s never sounded better: that Joyrider s straightforward, po-going, guitar-banging has been replaced by something a lot more fluid and insidiously likeable. Third Eye sounds like Parklife Blur with a heart of plaintive gold instead of a fixation on London Fields. It s been recorded in a shed, but one that sounds like it s been nicked from Abbey Road.
No matter what I do I ll always write big choruses. I can t get away from them. I ll never be like Thom Yorke and declare war on melody. That, for me, is a shame it s a disgrace. The only reason I got into music was to whistle it.
If enthusiasm was a virus, Phil Woolsey would be the monkey in Outbreak. As we leave him, he s getting ready to give sitar lessons to some local kids ( I m better than George Harrison, but not as good as Ravi Shankar. ), wondering aloud about all manner of scams (I would, however, recommend that the one involving Italian footballers and paramilitary murals remains in the realm of the theoretical), and generally looking forward to the madness descending again.
Pop songs with big fuck-off choruses will not go out of fashion, he states evangelically. Hitch up with Ninebar now, it s bound to be a lot of fun.

The Queen s Lounge EP will be released in November.