Mike
to do this. So we recorded “A New
South Wales” and then “New Town
sound effects and have more dialogue.
But the producer really liked the sound
just my voice— he said we didn’t need
a rock opera, and that this way would
make it more personal. So we took it
out on the road, and I wasn’t sure what
to expect. But I assumed the character
in that monologue, and just walked out
and started speaking, as the main character
who was singing the song. And at
the end of it, everybody stood up and
gave me this massive standing ovation.
I was really taken aback. And the
Jericho,” and everybody was like,
“What’s next?” So I carried on the dialogue
with “Rebecca,” and it was all
arranged and recorded in real-time. So
we all got into the whole story, and
everyone couldn’t wait to hear what
was happening next. And I was told
that I had to tell this story and put it in
the record, and I’d always loved the
Dylan Thomas spoken-word stuff on a
record, and funnily enough, we
released a live concert from that era
called Electric Folklore on record store
day, and that began with a bit of
Dylan Thomas on the intro, as we all
came on stage, so that brought it all full
circle. And initially, I wanted to do
07•2020
whole show just developed from one
town to the next, until we had a
Shakespearean actor in the role of the
narrator, and we had global climatechange
activists going through the
audience while we were playing certain
songs. And then the lockdown
happened. It was absolutely incredible,
and I was hoping to play it at the
Fringe Festival this year, but that got
shut down. But we might be able to
stage it here in Wales with social distancing
being applied.
IE: What did you discover about yourself
in the process?
MP: It reaffirmed my commitment to
The Alarm, 1984
making my own music and staying
strong when there might be doubt. It
just made me proud to have written
the songs that I did. When I came back
off the tour in ’86, I didn’t go on holiday
— I stayed home, and I took out a
video camera and set it up and wrote
what I could see, just writing about the
town below, where you could see all
these mining cottages and terraced
houses, row after row. And I’d see two
people walking along, holding hands,
and I’d think, “Where are they going?
What’s their future?” And that was
part of rediscovering the music again
for me — realizing that these songs
were part of my family. They go away
to the outer reaches of your thoughts,
but when they come back, they can
actually be more powerful than they
were 30 years ago and even capture
what’s happening now. The world was
going through massive changes back
then — the Berlin Wall was coming
down, free movement was happening,
borders were opening up. And now
with Covid-19, it’s almost like the
polar opposite — walls are going back
up, there’s a strange new politics going
on in America, and people are being
restricted again. So these songs are
eerily relevant again, and I felt reaffirmed,
reassured by that. A song like
“World on Fire” is probably more rele-
12 illinoisentertainer.com july 2020